Life Past Earth
by Pickerel
Summary: An archaeologist excavating ruins in South America discovers a long buried spacecraft and flies it off to a planet unknown. There, he undergoes a shocking revelation and must fight the impossible. Reviews are appreciated.
1. I

Chapter One 

            Garrett stepped off of the commercial jet in Panama City.  This was not his choice destination on his trip to South America.  Revolt had struck in Panama, and small arms fire could be heard in the city.  Garrett continued to think of how almost everywhere in the world there were people discontent almost to the point of revolt.  This was something common in time, but widespread political corruption was becoming more evident every day everywhere in the world.  Garrett quickly boarded a car with two other colleagues.  Garrett, in the back seat, opened his luggage and pulled out an AK-47.  He had purchased this for a few dollars out of necessity the previous year on a trip to the Mideast.  Keeping this low so as not to arouse the crowds of people on the streets, Garrett loaded a clip into the weapon and chambered a round.  The people in the street all around were rioters, and any one of them could possibly become violent.

            Garrett had purchased the AK-47 while on a trip to several former Soviet states.  This had been his first trip specifically for archaeology, at the age of twenty-seven.  The five years prior to that had been spent in the Marines.  In the Marines, Garrett had commanded a squad in missions across the world.  He had first seen action in Afghanistan searching for Osama bin Laden.  The next year was spent fighting against insurgents around Iraq.  The year after that was spent at home training, but then Garrett spent the last two years of his military career fighting to keep China from recapturing Taiwan.  Fortunately this had not escalated into nuclear war, but China had lost over two million men and hundreds of billions of dollars in materials.  The temporarily weakened Chinese army was now fighting against rebellions around the country attempting to get freedom from Communist rule.  China had blamed the United States and the other Democratic powers in the Americas and Europe for the rebellions, and the rebellions were actually being spurred on by those powers.  They denied it, though, because they argued that it was only their principles that were spurring on the rebellions and that if China elected a Democratic leader then the rebellions would stop.

            Those were also the years that Communism overtook several other countries.  The socialists who had been gaining power in Spain gradually changed their views until they were openly Communist.  Russia had also had its previously weak Communist party gain back power until it held most of the country's power.  They finally took back total power of the country in 2015.  Cuba, now supported by the newly Communist Russia and Spain, as well as the other Communist countries of Vietnam, North Korea, China, and Taiwan, began to launch an island hopping campaign in the Caribbean, and had taken control of several islands.  The Democratic powers, with the threat of nuclear arms and overwhelming numbers that the Communists now controlled, could only covertly attempt to stop their advance.  The year that Garrett left the Marines, in 2017, North Korea invaded and overwhelmed South Korea.  No one could stop the Communist advance without the threat of nuclear war.  That is why Garrett went to archaeology.  He wanted to look to the relatively bright past instead of the darkness that clouded the future.

            The car sped through Panama City to the waterfront.  There, the small arms fire sounded closer.  There were no people around that Garrett could see, but John, one of his colleagues, pointed out a freshly slain police officer.  Garrett judged that the officer had been dead for only a few minutes.  The body was still warm, but the blood had not been flowing from the two holes in it for long.  One shot had apparently hit an artery, and blood was gushing out in a small fountain from the man's shoulder.  Garrett instructed John to take the man's M4 and looked around the area to see if there was anyone suspicious visible.  John recovered the man's gun and ammunition and got back into the car.  After several minutes a small single-engine floatplane landed several hundred feet away from the water's edge and taxied to the beach.  The pilot, another colleague of Garrett's, stepped out and helped the three to move their things from the car to the plane.  Without incident the plane taxied out and took off.

            The plane turned south and began its long trip south.  Garrett was joining several archaeologists.  They were at a sight of unknown origin where recent heavy rains and an earthquake had unearthed several pyramidal structures.  Garrett wanted to see the structures and study them firsthand.  Only a few pictures and sketches had been provided of the pyramids.  The ground around them was bare as if the earth has just sloughed off of the pyramids.  Garrett had also procured a topographical map taken several years prior to the expedition.  Once the GPS coordinates of the pyramids had been marked on the map, it was clear that the pyramids had all been covered with large mounds of earth prior to their discovery after the earthquake.

            As the small plane continued to fly south over the South American mountains and jungles, Garrett continued to look at the map.  He took measurements between each of the pyramids, and as he was sketching lines between each of them he saw a pattern begin to form on the map.  There were eight pyramids that had been uncovered.  These were arranged in pairs.  Two of these pairs aligned on a bearing of 10 degrees.  The other two pairs aligned on a bearing of 100 degrees.  These two lines crossed and created an X.  The inner pyramid in each pair was an equal distance of 478 yards from the intersection of the lines.  The entire formation formed two squares and a crosshairs between them.  Between each of the pyramids in each pair the distance was 179 yards.  Garrett then looked to the intersection of the two lines of the crosshairs.  There was another mound there.  This mound was almost three hundred feet tall, which was larger than the other two hundred foot tall mounds.  The peak of the mound was almost exactly in the center of the crosshairs.  Garrett checked the GPS coordinates of all of the pyramids and they did not include that mound.


	2. II

Chapter Two 

            After several hours of flight the plane landed in a river deep in the interior of South America.  It taxied up to a small village made of three prefabricated houses and a large generator that had been shipped to the location on a barge when the excavation at the pyramids had begun two weeks earlier.  This village was a good distance from the actual excavation site, since it had to be built on the bank of the river for large vessel and floatplane access.  To actually get to the excavation required using a shallow draft boat to go up a nearby stream for about six miles and then taking an automobile from the boat three more miles inland to get to the nearest pyramid.

            Garrett stepped off of the plane and before helping to unload it he greeted the other colleagues that were already at the excavation.  Chris and Alexis had been the first to discover the site as they were flying over it on their way to another location farther to the south.  Paul had then joined them after the discovery of the site, as well as five assistants who they had hired to help with excavations when they had started excavations in South America the previous year.  After Garrett had greeted everyone he went back to the plane to unload his things.  There was not much to unload, but it had been secured tightly in the back of the plane to prevent it from shifting around in flight and hitting anything in the plane.

            The following morning Garrett got onto the boat to assist at the excavations.  While heading upstream to reach the dock he showed John, Chris, Alexis, and Paul what he had discovered on the topographic map.  However, although they were interested in excavating there, they were running out of support for their dig.  Although the pyramids were plain in comparison to other pyramids in the region, that was the problem.  The few investors back in America wanted to get something in return for the dig in the form of material objects.  There had been no carvings found on the pyramids or anything else that they could take home to place in collections.  There were only two more weeks remaining and the funding would be cut.  Garrett still wanted to investigate the central site, but he would have to work there with no help.

            The boat arrived at the dock on the stream.  The dock was simply a clearing on the water's edge with a wooden pole to tether the boat on.  There were three jeeps and a bulldozer, purchased as military surplus, in the clearing.  John, Chris, Alexis, Paul, and the five workers got onto two of the jeeps and left to head down a rough dirt road.  The road was really just brush that had been trampled flat and into the mud and dirt by the bulldozer.  Garrett got onto the bulldozer and got out his GPS.  He headed down the road for three miles where it went over a hill of dirt and toppled trees.  There was then a clearing around one of the pyramids where much of the soil around it had sloughed off and created what looked vaguely like a crater where there was nothing but dirt and a couple trees around the pyramid.  Garrett drove past this pyramid and to the second one in a clearing that had been connected when someone had plowed through the piled dirt with the bulldozer.  Past the second pyramid there was just jungle.

            Garrett continued to drive forward through the trees and around the largest ones until he began to drive up a mound several minutes later.  This was a combination bulldozer and backhoe, so Garrett drove nearly to the top of the hill and began working at the hydraulic controls for the shovel.  He quickly dug several feet into the soft and rain-soaked soil.  After nearly a half hour of digging Garrett repositioned the bulldozer and continued to dig.  After digging ten feet deep in a wide hole, there was a sharp grating noise as the hoe struck the surface of the pyramid.  Garrett then realized that since there was a pyramid here it would take another earthquake to unearth it before the two weeks were over.  He then thought that if there were some explosives handy that he could unearth the pyramid in one or two days.  Garrett picked up the radio on the bulldozer.

            "Chris, Alex, Paul, you there?"

            "Yeah, this is Alexis."

            "Are there any explosives in the camp?"

            "Why do you need explosives?"

            "I can unearth this pyramid here in a couple hours if I could get an explosive charge on the surface of each side of the hill surrounding it."

            "Sorry, but we don't have any explosives."

            "Have you encountered any insurgents around here then?"

            "No, but I was told to watch out for them."

            "Do you have any idea where I could find them?"

            "Why?"

            "They would be the people I would be able to go for to get some explosives."

            "Hello," said an unfamiliar voice over the radio.

            "Who are you?"

            "You need explosives?  Then you arrange a meeting place and bring some money."

            "How about one mile upriver of Stream 34HX on the river at six this evening?"

            "Okay.  Come alone and unarmed."

            "Fine."

            "You really think you're not going to be kidnapped."

            "I'm doing business with them, not opposing them."


	3. III

Chapter Three 

            Garrett drove back to the dock and awaited everyone's return there.  He arrived back at the village at five.  There, he handed Paul a scoped rifle from the gun locker in one of the buildings and told him to stay back as cover just in case anything happened.  Garrett himself took his AK-47 and placed it into a cabinet on the boat.  Garrett told Paul to walk upstream from the village for a half mile and then track Garrett through the rifle's scope.  Garrett then got onto the boat and left upriver.  He arrived one mile upriver of the stream at five thirty and anchored.  Soon another boat approached his.  This one was an old, beaten up speedboat.  There were several patches where Garrett assumed that it had been struck by gunfire.  The boat pulled up near Garrett's and idled.  The man at the helm threw a rope to Garrett and Garrett pulled up the slack and tied the rope to his own boat.

            "What have you got?"

            "What do you need?"

            "Do you have any HE rocket propelled grenades?"

            "Yes."

            The man went into the cabin and produced a rocket launcher and several rockets.

            "Let me see your money."

            "How much do you want for the launcher and eight rockets?"

            "Three thousand US dollars."

            "Make it two and a half and we've got a deal."

            Garrett handed several bills to the man.  He began to take the rockets from the man and put them in his own boat when the two heard a helicopter in the distance.  The man drew a handgun and pointed it at Garrett's throat.

            "This is a trap isn't it?"

            "I don't know who's in that helicopter but they aren't with me."

            "How do I know that?"

            "Are you going to flee or fight?"

            "It depends on whether the helicopter is armed.  Is it?"

            "I don't know.  But if it starts firing at these boats I'm taking it out with a rocket."

            The man holstered his gun and began to untie the rope connecting the two boats.  Garrett reached over and took the rest of the rockets and the launcher.  He loaded one of the rockets into the RPG-2 and set it on the floor of the boat.

            "I think this would work better."

            Garrett looked over and saw that the other man had finished untying his boat and had taken out a Stinger launcher.

            "Fine.  I'll just watch for ground forces then."

            The helicopter approached the two boats.  It became apparent that it was a military helicopter.  Garrett motioned for the man to cover in the cabin of the boat until the helicopter was at a close range.  Once the helicopter was nearby and a man with a megaphone in the helicopter began to shout down at the boats the insurgent swung back the cabin door and stood up.  He fired the missile, which streaked upward into the helicopter.  The helicopter exploded, the rotor flying up high above it before plunging down into the river with the rest of the helicopter.  Garrett started up his boat's motor.

            "It was good doing business with you!"

            Garrett turned around his boat and headed downstream, watching the other boat head to the helicopter wreck to salvage items from it.  He headed downstream past Paul and into camp.  There, he transferred the RPG-2 and all of the rockets into his room for save keeping.  The next morning, Garrett loaded these back onto the boat and went back upstream once everyone had boarded the boat.  Garrett took the bulldozer to the site of the main pyramid again.  He reloaded a rocket into the launcher and aimed at the hillside.  He pulled the trigger, and the rocket flew out of the tube.  It hit the hillside and exploded.  The smoke cleared and the hillside was still mostly intact.  Garrett loaded another rocket and fired again.  This time, Garrett could feel the ground shaking under him as one side of the hill sloughed away, revealing the bare side of the pyramid.

            This pyramid was unusual at least on this one side.  Instead of having the usual stepped design, it was of a smooth nature instead.  It was similar to the stereotypical Old Egyptian pyramids, but the rock was encrusted with dirt after having been buried for hundreds of years in it.  Garrett felt that he would work with this one side of the pyramid before uncovering the other sides of it.  The side was flat and uniform, but several feet above ground level there was what appeared to be a chip in the surface of the pyramid.  Garrett took a shovel from the bulldozer and went over to this feature.  He scraped the side of the shovel against the surface and the shovel dug into soil.  Garrett scraped away until he realized that this was not a superficial feature.  He dug in with the shovel and began tunneling into the side of the pyramid.  Garrett dug for two hours and reached ten feet into the pyramid.  Concluding that he had found an entrance to the pyramid, he got onto the bulldozer's radio.

            "Hey, can you get some people out here."

            Chris picked up the radio.  "Why?"

            "I've uncovered a pyramid.  And this one's different from the others."


	4. IV

Chapter Four 

            Garrett put down the radio and continued digging.  He dug for another hour and got about another ten feet into the side of the pyramid when he heard an engine come to an idle and turn off outside.

            "Damn," remarked Chris.

            "Yeah.  I told you it was different."

            "Are you going to uncover the rest of the pyramid?"

            "No.  I'm going to tunnel into this side.  I think this is an entrance."

            Chris and three other workers got out of the jeep and began to clear off the surface of the pyramid around the tunnel that Garrett had dug.  The sides of the pyramid were very smooth, as well as the sides of the tunnel.  Garrett continued to dig deeper, aided by one of the other workers, and the other three cleared off the sides of the tunnel.  After digging another forty feet into the pyramid and finding nothing, Garrett guessed that the tunnel went straight to the center of the pyramid.  He did not know what would be there, though, as this was unlike every other pyramid he knew of.

            Once everyone had become tired they returned to the village.  That night and the next day it began to rain.  The swollen and swift-moving stream was unsafe for the boat to travel on, so no work could get done that day.  The rain continued the day after that, a Tuesday, but then finally stopped that day.  However, Garrett could not return after the rain had ended since the river had to return to normal levels first.  On Wednesday it was safe to travel, so Garrett got onto the boat.  He headed to his excavation, this time with Chris and three workers.  They continued digging deeper into the side of the pyramid, and after three hours the five were digging in near darkness one hundred feet into the pyramid.  There were still no openings on either side of the tunnel and if appeared to continued straight on.

            Now, however, Paul, Alexis, John, and the other two workers joined them.  They figured that they should let their excavation site dry out for a couple days before returning to it.  The tunnel was about seven feet wide and eight feet tall, so only three people could work at pushing it farther.  The rest of the people worked at digging out at either side of the tunnel and removing the earth from the pyramid.  For two more hours Chris, Garrett, and one of the foreign workers continued to dig forward.  Garrett guessed that they were about fifty feet from the center of the pyramid.  Exhausted once more, everyone returned to the village.

            Garrett returned on Thursday to the pyramid and resumed tunneling.  After digging thirty feet farther in one hour, Chris announced that the tunnel was widening.  He began to dig out to the left, and those following him unearthed a right angle.  The other worker than began to dig out to the right.  Two hours later, Chris and the foreign worker struck walls.  Now more people began to dig forward.  After another two hours of work, they had cleared the walls of the room, and three other exits which Garrett assumed were to complete a radial symmetry.  Everyone was eager to completely excavate the room, but they had to return to the camp before nightfall.

            On Friday, only Garrett returned to the excavation at the central pyramid.  John had to return to the United States to present the team's current findings.  Everyone else had to catch up on the other excavation, which needed to be dried out and continued.  Garrett began to dig in.  There was a square about ten feet along the sides in the middle of the room that needed to be excavated.  Garrett began digging in.  After digging in three feet he struck the corner of something.  He began to dig around it.  After half of the remaining earth was shoveled aside Garrett saw that there was a circular rock in the middle of room.  However, shoveling out the area took much of the time, so Garrett tried to just push the remaining earth down.  After ramming it hard with his shoulder a couple times the large block of soil toppled and broke apart on the floor of the room.

            Garrett took out a paintbrush and began to sweep the remaining dirt from the surface of the rock.  To his surprise, he uncovered several deeply engraved symbols.  They were clustered in a line curving along the edge of the rock.  Garrett had not seen symbols like this on South American or any other structures from the time period that the South American pyramids were build.

            "Then again," Garrett thought, "this is no ordinary pyramid."

            Garrett could see marks on the floor where the stone had been dragged to its position.  However, there were also marks that indicated that it had been moved away.  Garrett fetched a pencil and a sheet of paper that had also been left behind from the previous day and began to sketch the symbols onto it.  He brushed away more dirt and once he had dusted off the tabletop-like surface, he found the same symbols again on the other side of the table.  Garrett wondered if this circular stone was not a table but was a seal for a tomb or another such chamber beneath it.  The only way to find this out was to drag the slab of stone to one side or to break it.  The only feasible way to drag the stone off was to tie it to a long chain or rope and run that rope to the bulldozer.

            Garrett returned to the bulldozer.  There was not a winch or cable on it, so Garrett returned to the boat to check the remaining jeep for a cable.  There was a cable, but as Garrett was removing the cable the other people who had been at the main excavation returned.  Garrett did not want to have to walk back to the camp, so he reluctantly boarded the boat and returned to camp.  In camp, Paul received a call from John.  He listened for several moments and then hung up the phone.

            "Our funding has been cut.  They wanted tangible evidence of something being here, but we have none."

            "You all can go back home but I'm staying here to finish up work at the main pyramid."

            "Fine.  Just watch your back and make sure you don't get kidnapped or shot."

            "Oh, don't worry about that."


	5. V

Chapter Five 

            Over the next three days, everyone but Garrett flew out on a plane to return to the United States.  Garrett had to stay in camp to help everyone pack their things and to fuel the plane upon its arrival.  Only Garrett remained out of the original people.  On the last plane that came in to pick up Alexis and two of the foreign workers, Garrett's girlfriend Jackie arrived.

            "Why did you want me to come down here?"

            "It was going to get really quiet down here."

            With no one else using any of the equipment, Garrett set out to remove the rock which he had decided to upon uncovering it.  He loaded onto the boat the rocket launcher as well as his AK-47 and the M4 that he had found in Panama City.  Garrett then went upstream to the dock, where he stripped the winch cables from two of the jeeps.  Jackie unloaded the weapons and put those onto the floor of the bulldozer.  Garrett then drove the bulldozer back the several miles to the pyramid.  Once there, he took out the cables.  He gave one end to Jackie and told her to tie it to the bulldozer's blade while he himself walked up to the rock.  There was no good way to tie the cable around, so Garrett wrapped the cable around the rock several times and tied it.  Jackie had tied the other end of the cable to the bulldozer, so Garrett told her to turn it on and begin driving the bulldozer away from the pyramid.  She began slowly driving away, and Garrett watched the cable become taut.  There was a loud grinding noise and the rock slowly began sliding in the direction of the tunnel entrance.  Garrett watched as a tunnel heading straight down was exposed from under the rock and ran over to the bulldozer to tell Jackie to stop.

            Garrett returned to the central room and untied the cable from around the rock.  He told Jackie to move the bulldozer to the entrance of the temple and to come back with a flashlight.  As she was off moving the bulldozer, Garrett rigged up the end of the cable to form a simple climbing rig.  Once Jackie returned with the flashlight, Garrett took this, turned it on, and jumped down into the opening.  He shone the flashlight down the hole, and the beam faded back into darkness about fifty feet down against the smooth rock walls on each side of the tunnel.  Garrett began heading down, and stopped again once he had come fifty feet down.  He looked down the tunnel, and about thirty feet farther it ended.  The light still did not illuminate the floor, though, so Garrett continued to go down.  He reached the end of the tunnel down, and now he noticed that the ceiling of the chamber that he was also stone.  The flashlight was illuminating one wall next to Garrett, but the other three walls were not visible.

            "What is a room larger than one hundred feet long doing underground?  What is going on with this pyramid?" Garrett thought.

            "What do you see?"

            "I don't see anything yet.  I don't see a floor; all I see is one wall and the ceiling."

            "So it's a large room?"

            "I don't know how large.  Let me find the floor first."

            Garrett continued down along the one wall another fifty feet and looked down again.  He could still not see the bottom of the room.  He continued down another fifty feet and still could not see a floor.  Finally, after going three hundred feet down, Garrett's feet struck a gravel floor.

            "I've hit the floor!  Now I'm going to go see what's down here!"

            Garrett began to walk away from the cable when he realized that there was no echo.  He turned back to where a dim light just slightly better than the darkness of the chamber illuminated a small patch of the floor.

            "Can you toss down the Kalashnikov rifle?"

            "Why?"

            "I need to use the scope!"

            Garrett had attached a night vision scope to the Kalashnikov rifle from one of the hunting rifles since he preferred an assault rifle and had gained a feel for them from his years in the military.  He preferred the Russian AK-47 over the American M16 and M4 due to its larger 7.62mm rounds, which allowed better stopping power.  The AK-47 was also a simple gun that could be maintained easily, and it was also very reliable.  Garrett's AK-47 clattered to the ground below the tunnel, intact due to its solid construction.  Garrett picked up the gun and looked through the scope.  He could see two walls, on either side of him, which were each about five hundred feet away.  The far wall was still out of range of the night vision scope.  However, there was a smaller object in view which appeared to be free standing.  This appeared to be a two floor structure about two hundred feet across.  This structure was plain, except for what appeared to be a door on one side.

            "They didn't have clean doors thousands of years ago.  That might be a seal then," Garrett thought.

            Garrett walked toward the structure, still looking through the scope.  He was two hundred feet away when he saw the door-like feature slide to one side.  Several figures exited and appeared to aim firearms at Garrett.  They all began to talk in a language that Garrett had never heard before.  Garrett dropped to one knee and aimed his weapon back at them.  He also held his flashlight in his left hand, which he shone toward the people to get a better view of them on his weapon's sight.  They all shielded their eyes, and apparently not used to seeing light.


	6. VI

Chapter Six 

            The light illuminated the figures better.  They appeared to be human, but were dressed with what appeared to be armor on their legs, bodies, and arms.  The people continued to shout toward Garrett.  He counted eight people, each of them pointing a weapon in his direction.  Garrett stayed completely still for several minutes as the people shouted at him.  The people began to approach him, and Garrett brandished his weapon and shone his flashlight at them.  One of the people fired their weapon, and what appeared to be a tracer round flew past Garrett.  The shot was relatively silent but was by no means silenced.  Garrett had developed a very good aim in the military, and he quickly focused on the man's forehead and fired a single shot.  The shot flew clean into the man's head.  The shot knocked him down in what Garrett knew was a fatal shot.

            The seven remaining men opened fire on Garrett.  Their unusual firearms created a whirring noise when fired as opposed to a cracking or thundering noise.  Garrett fired another several shots at two other men and got up.  He broke into a run, switching his gun into his left hand and firing several shots at the men as he ran in front of them to create a harder target.  He could hear thuds as two shots struck unprotected flesh and metallic clanking noises as most of the remaining shots struck the peoples' armor.  Garrett stopped walking and took aim for another shot.  This shot struck another man in the head and knocked him down.  There were now three men dead on the ground and one other man bleeding.

            Garrett was now closer, so when he shined his flashlight at the men they were forced to shield their eyes.  Their shots were not ineffective, so Garrett took aim and shot each of the remaining men in the head.  The area fell silent.

            "What is down there?"

            Garrett focused his weapon on the door.

            "There are people here.  This is unlike anything I've ever seen!"

            "What?"

            "For one thing there are people alive down here.  On top of that these people…"

            The door opened, and Garrett fired several shots.  A man fell backwards, struck by the shots.

            "These people don't speak any language I've heard or seen before.  And they have armor and weapons and doors that can't be from thousands of years ago!"

            "Can I come down?"

            "Fine.  Pull up the climbing rig I made and use that.  And bring the assault rifle!"

            Garrett continued to aim at the door.  After several minutes Jackie joined him.

            "Who are these people?"

            "I don't know."

            The door opened.  Garrett fired at the people standing in the door, and was soon joined by the weaker fire from the 5.56mm rounds from the M4 that Jackie had brought down with her.

            "Move off to one side a bit and cover me if you see anyone move at the door."

            Garrett moved up to the bodies.  He tossed the firearms away from the bodies and picked one up.  This gun had a trigger and an iron sight, but that was the only similarity between that and any other gun that Garrett had used.  Garrett flipped a latch on the side of the gun and exposed a glowing panel.  This was similar to one that he had seen on a specialized anti-missile system mounted on a Humvee.

            "Damn.  This gun is a laser."

            Garrett heard the activity inside the building.  He aimed the laser at the door and pulled the trigger.  A pulse from the laser shot out and struck the wall right inside the door.  The wall was apparently metal, since the short wavelength light in the photons emitted by the laser caused sparks to fly from the wall.  This was something that would only happen with the photoelectric effect and ionizing radiation.  Garrett decided that he would try out the laser, so he approached the door.  It was still open, so he swept across the hall inside the door.  The hall ahead forked, so Garrett motioned to Jackie.  She joined him.

            "You look left and fire at anything you see that has a weapon.  I'll look right."

            Garrett peered around the corner.  There was a man approaching the intersection who was armed.  Garrett aimed with the laser and fired at the man's neck.  The intense light burned a shallow crater into the man's neck, and he flinched back and then passed out.  Garrett fired one more shot at the man and assumed that he was dead.  Jackie did not see anyone.  Garrett told her to watch and see if anyone entered the hallway on the left half, and Garrett began walking down the hallway.  He passed two bunkrooms.  There were fifteen beds in each room, and Garrett had counted sixteen casualties.  

            Another man, without armor, jumped up from behind one of the beds with one of the lasers.  Garrett heard one of the man's bones crack as he stood up and turned.  The man had not even aimed his weapon when Garrett fired.  This time he aimed for the head and killed with a single shot.  Garrett walked over and saw that these people were very similar to humans, but they appeared to have evolved slightly to cope with the near darkness better.  Inside this building it was not completely dark, as there were very dim lights recessed in the ceiling overhead.  However, these people had slightly different eyes, and larger and differently structured ears.  Other than that, these people were human.

            Garrett kicked the laser away from the man and checked the room once again.  He then heard gunfire in the hallway and stepped to the door.  A woman had just stepped out and Jackie had fired several rounds into her, one shot apparently having broken her back.  Garrett turned around and walked into the next bunkroom.  This room was empty.  Garrett motioned for Jackie to come join him.

            "There are thirty people here and eighteen are casualties.  Now…"

            Garrett stopped talking as he heard faint footsteps.  He stepped over to a door and it slid open.  Garrett laid down the laser and pulled up his Kalashnikov.  Someone stepped out of the door and before Garrett even saw who it was he slammed the butt of his gun into the side of their head.  The woman collapsed to the ground.  Garrett slid her gun back to Jackie.  This was another one of the lasers that it appeared was the only weapon here.  Garrett looked into the room that the woman had just come out of and there were three other people in here.  The people turned upon hearing the woman hit the ground and fired their weapons at Garrett.  He quickly ducked around the corner.  Sticking his gun around the corner, Garrett sprayed the room with automatic fire.  Once his clip was emptied he put in another clip and looked around the wall into the room.  One man on the ground fired at him, but the shot missed and Garrett fired a shot into the man's head.

            "Now there are twenty-two casualties.  Watch out for anyone else and listen."

            Garrett entered the room with the three dead men and women.  He slid their weapons away from them and saw that the room that he was now in was an armory.  There were four gun racks, each with room for ten guns.  There were ten guns remaining combined remaining in the racks, so everyone remaining alive was armed.  Garrett walked back into the hallway and checked the rest of the rooms on this floor.  In what appeared to be a kitchen, Garrett found another woman who was armed.  She, however, had the armor, so Garrett was forced to fire several shots to knock her down and then had to knock her unconscious with the butt of his Kalashnikov.  He took her weapon, since she was still alive, and then walked to the end of the hall.  Upon opening the door, he found that there was a large indoor garden.  The lights were brighter here, and there was a water pump which piped water into the rows of plants.

            Garrett entered this opening and immediately had two shots go by him.  He ducked behind a row of plants and swept the area.  One of the attackers was standing up and aiming in his direction.  Garrett put his head down and heard a thud as the laser struck the soil in the planter in front of him.  He lifted his rifle and fired a round into the head of the man.  He then began running down the row of plants and swept his gun around looking for the other attacker.  At the end of every other row of plants there was a tree, so Garrett climbed up into a tree.  From here he could look down and spotted another man in a window on the second story of the building.  He aimed and fired two shots.  The window shattered and the body fell out of the window and to the ground.  A shot then struck the tree near Garrett's head.  He turned and saw two more men standing near the door.  However, there was a sudden burst of fire.  A round exited through one man's head.  Both of the men fell forward and Jackie stepped over them.  However, Garrett then saw a round fly over her head.  He traced the round's origin to one man and fired at him.

            "I had to kill two other people who came into the hall."

            "Then that should be all of them." 


	7. VII

Chapter Seven 

            After the gunfight ended, Garrett moved all of the bodies into one of the bunk rooms.  The woman who was still alive was tied to one of the beds.

            "How long do you think people have been down here?"

            "I've never seen weapons like this.  Their language wasn't anything I've heard before, although parts did sound like Inuit.  I think these people and their descendents have been down here for a long time."

            "I saw some books in one of the rooms.  Do you think you can translate them?"

            "I don't speak or read or write in Inuit, but I can scan the pages back in the camp and send them to have someone else translate them.  Can you go get the books?"

            "Okay."

            Garrett followed Jackie to one of the rooms.  There were several books in there.  One of the books was out on the table, and it appeared that the woman that Garrett had removed from the room had been writing in it.  When Garrett picked up the book, it appeared to be a logbook.  Garrett flipped back through the pages and realized that this book went through several generations.  There were more books like that which were on shelves on one side of the room.  There were nineteen other books.  Garrett took the two at the beginning of one of the rows, which had the least marking on the sides and therefore had the smallest numbers.  He put these out with the other book that had been open.

            "I still haven't seen the rest of this place."

            Garrett picked up his Kalashnikov from the table and entered the basement of the building.  There was a simple thermal generator here, which used the heat difference between the ground water and the air to generate wind in a turbine.  Garrett found a panel containing several switches and began to push them in various directions.  After pushing one of the switches up the lights brightened.  Garrett went back upstairs and found that one of the switches which he had pressed had turned on exterior lights around the perimeter of the structure.  With the better light, he was able to look into the back of the chamber through the scope of his rifle.  The structure was not the only feature here.  Several hundred feet farther into the chamber, protruding out of the darkness, was a ship several hundred feet wide. Garrett did not know for sure that it was a ship, but he could see several massive exhaust ports along what was apparently the wing of the ship.

            Garrett walked toward the ship.  He guessed that the wing was seven hundred feet wide and forty feet thick.  There were exhaust ports on the trailing edge of the wing ten feet in diameter every fifty feet.  Garrett continued to walk toward the ship, and was soon under the wing.  There was no landing gear on it, and the wing and fuselage simply rested on the floor of the chamber.  Garrett walked around the wing, and once it was only a few feet away Jackie, without a night vision scope on her gun, finally saw that there was something there.  Garrett walked past the wing, and saw the rest of the ship.  The ship was a large delta-wing aircraft.  The entire vessel was about twelve hundred feet long.  Garrett walked up to the side of the seventy-foot tall fuselage and looked for an entrance.

            "What do you see?"

            "I don't know.  This is either a spacecraft or a damn big plane."

            "How did it get down here?"

            "My guess is that whenever it was brought here it was driven in through the underground aquifers.  You can break through that limestone with just about anything, so a quarter mile long plane could make it through."

            Garrett reached nearly the midsection of the plane and found what appeared to be a loose panel.  He shoved it with his shoulder and the panel pushed back, folding up and exposing a door.  Garrett then looked for a handle to open this door with.  There was not a handle, but next to the door there was a glowing panel.  This blue panel did not emit much light, but when Garrett touched it, the panel gave way.  Garrett felt the door shake slightly and stepped back.  The door slid into the side under the panel.  There was no light inside.  Garrett then turned on the flashlight and stepped inside.  He walked down the hallway for about fifty feet and reached an intersection.  There was a hallway which ran straight ahead to what appeared to be another exit door.  There was also a hallway which continued ahead out of the range of the flashlight.

            Garrett headed down the long hall until he reached a door at the end.  There were also dozens of doors on each side of the hallway, but the panels next to these doors were not active and the doors did not open.  However, the door at the end of the hallway was active.  Garrett stepped through the opening door and found himself in what appeared to be the cockpit of the plane.


	8. VIII

Chapter Eight 

Garrett walked up to a seat in the middle of the plane. There was a panel in front of this seat, on which there was a joystick and several levers. There was also another lighted panel, which was very small. Garrett tapped this with his index finger and the ship shook slightly. Several lights brightened on the ceiling. Garrett turned around to Jackie, who was still standing behind him.

"Should we stay or leave?"

"I think we should take this out. If we find a way out with this then we can sell it or do something with it."

"Then get a seat."

Jackie walked over to one of the several seats in the cockpit and sat down.

"Let's see. One of these should be for the engines."

Garrett pulled one of the three levers on the panel. The lever farthest to the left caused the ship to shake slightly, and Garrett could feel it moving forward. Several powerful exterior lights allowed Garrett to see that the ship was nearing a wall. Garrett pulled the throttle to three quarters, and the ship sped up. The sharp nose cleanly cut into the wall, and the rest of the ship followed. Garrett took hold of the joystick with his other hand and pulled up. He didn't want to flood the chamber by coming up in a stream or the river which he knew was nearby, so he pulled up sharply. With the left hand he increased the throttle to about nine tenths full. The ship broke out of the ground at a shallow angle and Garrett pulled up even more. Garrett could only see the ground on the horizon, so he flattened out and relaxed the throttle to about one quarter until he was cruising about two miles up at a speed that he guessed was just subsonic.

"Identify yourself!" shouted a voice in Spanish.

Garrett looked out of the large and thick window and saw a pair of military jets alongside the ship. He looked for a radio and then saw perforations in the panel in front of him. There was no button.

"Testing one, two, three. Can you hear me?"

"Yes," the pilot replied in English and with a heavy accent.

"I just found this underground and decided to take it out."

"Land or I will be forced to fire."

"Where do you want me to land? This thing's so heavy it'll just break through the surface."

Garrett pulled the lever which he had not yet pulled. The two jets where thrown several hundred yards away. They fell behind the ship and Garrett saw explosions on what was apparently a shield that he had just set up. Realizing that he could start a global incident, Garrett pulled the throttle to maximum and sped up. In a few minutes he was orbiting the planet.

Garrett now looked at a screen on the panel ahead of him. He saw that it was a map of the galaxy. Three locations were pointed out on the map. One of these locations was Earth and the other two were unknown. Garrett tapped the screen over the nearest location and it was highlighted. The ship turned and sped up, now out of Garrett's control. A timer appeared on the screen. It displayed the numbers, "237-17-39-04."

"We'll be arriving somewhere in about eight months."

"So we're stuck here for eight months?!"

"Yeah. I guess we better make ourselves at home."

"I hate you!"

"Maybe now, but this location appears to be where this ship came from. That means there will be people there. People that speak a language that we should learn before we get there."

Garrett searched through the ship for the remainder of the day. On the left side of the hallway there was a kitchen, mess hall, four bunkrooms, showers and restrooms, and four officers' quarters. The back half of the ship was the engine room, which contained several massive ion engines. The other side of the ship contained several storerooms an indoor garden. The storerooms contained an unusual machine that used nuclear fusion and a hydrogen collection device to create water. The food in the storerooms had been preserved in freezing temperatures and inert gasses and was perfectly preserved. There were also more things in the storeroom, such as clothing, armor, arms, and raw materials. There was also another one of the fusion machines. This one, however, could use the collected hydrogen to fuse together many different elements.

Jackie found more books aboard the ship and began to use them to create a translation dictionary. In the first month she had created a translation dictionary and began to learn the foreign language. During this first month, Garrett was working on a project of his own. He set up one of the bunkrooms as a lab. With his basic chemistry knowledge, he was able to make extra gunpowder. He preferred having a higher rate of fire and decent accuracy as opposed to the perfect accuracy of the laser rifles. He began by making smokeless gunpowder. He then made a large supply of brass for the casings. However, for the rounds themselves he experimented. He made rounds from many different materials, including lead, gold, tungsten, and uranium. Having nothing to test these rounds on, though, he just made them and stocked them.

Garrett also began to learn the foreign language. It was similar to the Romance languages in the structure of sentences, but was similar to Inuit due to the extensive vocabulary. Since it was similar to two different forms of languages that Garrett had been exposed to, he did not have much of a problem learning the language. Jackie had assembled the translation dictionary for the language, so she also did not have trouble learning it once she had completed the dictionary. Both Jackie and Garrett had learned the language in four months. Once they had learned the translations for the several hundred words that Jackie had originally translated, each of them was able to then use a dictionary that Jackie had found aboard to learn every word in the language. However, whether or not the language was still in use several thousand years after the ship had left its original planet was still not known.

For the remaining three months, Garrett and Jackie had nothing that they could do. They were forced to find clothes that fit them out of the ship's storage. They also found armor that fit. This armor was very unusual. It was very thin on the arms and legs but the body section was much thicker. The body section also had a small pressure-activated screen the folded out. This screen displayed an option to scan, and when this was selected an object that was held in your hand was scanned and was atomically broken apart to be stored inside the body of the armor. Its name was then displayed on the screen, and upon selecting the name the item was run back out of the armor through the scanner and into your hand. The armor could not hold many items, though.

Garrett had also found, stored on a much larger scanning device, that there was additional armor and weapons in storage. Among these things were the laser rifles as well as handguns and short swords. Every weapon used the laser technology. However, Garrett was also able to store other things such as his Kalashnikov in the armor. However, this was not given a name since it was not part of the technology that was aboard the ship. Garrett was able to program a name for the Kalashnikov into its electronic signature with the larger storage device, though. However, since it used ammunition, Garrett also had to store the clips for the Kalashnikov separately on the device. To allow the clips to take up less space Garrett simply put them all into a small metal box and then scanned the box. In that manner he could easily carry twenty clips for his Kalashnikov, which was at total of six hundred rounds. He also did the same thing for Jackie's M4, and allowed her to carry four hundred eighty extra rounds for her gun.

However, Garrett didn't know if the rest of the planet's population would be as friendly as the people he had met in the chamber under the pyramid. Therefore, since he didn't know if he would be able to get back to the ship and reload his clips, he decided to also carry one of the laser rifles. Aboard the ship he had taken apart one of these rifles to see its inner workings. This rifle used a slow chemical reaction to create the electromagnetic energy, which was stored in a partially exposed tube. There were enough of the chemicals aboard to allow the rifle to function at full power for several years without having the tubes refilled. There was also a switch which controlled the valves on the chemicals to create what amounted to an on off switch for the gun. The trigger controlled a high speed shutter on the muzzle of the gun. The lasers had a long effective range and were not affected by wind or gravity. However, the guns heated up in only a few shots, and the shots could be weakened severely, reflected, or completely dissipated by certain kinds of alloys.


	9. IX

Chapter Nine 

One day late in the eighth month of the trip, Garrett was looking up in the cockpit of the ship. He noticed that the panel now displayed that there were only a couple days left until the ship would reach the destination planet. Since Garrett could now read the script on the display screen, he could read that the destination was a habitable planet called Ragol. He had also begun to pick up communications from the planet one day, when there was one day left before the ship was going to arrive in its orbit.

"This is Pioneer Two communications," said someone in the foreign language.

"Who are you?"

"I am part of the communications team aboard Pioneer Two."

"I could guess that much. Then where is this Pioneer Two, we're going to be there in one more day."

"We still haven't established any surface colonies. We're still in orbit."

"What do you mean, 'still in orbit'?"

"We arrived just as you were leaving, and we're still here."

"So you've been up here for over three thousand years?"

"What are you talking about? Is this the _Gallea_?"

"Is that what this ship is called? Is the _Gallea_ a large delta-wing craft about a thousand feet long?"

"So you are the _Gallea_. Now what are you talking about? We've only been here five years. You left five years ago."

"Damn shame. I found this ship buried a few hundred feet underground at some ancient ruins."

"What?"

"I don't know. Perhaps there was some kind of time warping on this ship's trip to Earth and they arrived there a few thousand years earlier?"

"Okay. So you aren't the original crew?"

"Negative. There are only two of us. I'm Garrett and my girlfriend Jackie is also here."

"Okay. Do you know how to dock your ship with the docking station on Pioneer Two?"

"Negative. I'm going to have to go down on the surface."

"Okay."

"Do you know any good places to land this?"

"If you land near Pioneer One I can send down a search party to take you up to Pioneer Two."

"So where is Pioneer One?"

"When you see Pioneer Two, it is on the surface below that. It is a large domed structure. Try to land as close to it as possible but don't hit the structure."

"Okay. Land near the dome."

"I have one more bit of helpful information. You will want to watch out for the native wildlife. Everything is highly aggressive. Does the _Gallea_ have an armory aboard?"

"Affirmative. I have armor and arms and I am trained in combat."

"Good. Make sure you take some of those with you. And also bring medical supplies if you have any, because it will be a difficult trip to the main teleporter once you get off the ship."

"Where are the medical supplies?"

"The medical supplies should be found in the main storerooms and storage computers. Look for items ending with the suffixes of 'mate' and 'fluid' and 'atomizer'."

"Okay. I'll make sure to do that."

Garrett went to the storage computer. Sure enough, there were large quantities of Monomates, Monofluids, and Moon Atomizers stored in the computer. Garrett transferred several of each item into the storage device on his armor and did the same thing with Jackie's armor.

Late that day, Garrett went up into the cockpit of the _Gallea_. He could now spot the planet far in the distance. He glanced down at the panel and noticed that the ship would be arriving in orbit in one hour. Far ahead of the ship, one of the stars could be seen increasing in size. Up until now, the ship's autopilot had steered it clear of every other star. The ship was going at a very high rate of speed currently, but it was going much slower than it had been going for the past time. The star was gradually growing larger, until the ship had passed it. Now ahead of the ship was a small blue planet that appeared similar to Earth. Garrett continued to watch this grow larger. Finally, the _Gallea_'s autopilot set the ship into a high orbit. Garrett then switched off the autopilot and sped the ship down to under five hundred miles per hour. He used the screen on the panel to look up information about Ragol.

Ragol was a planet slightly smaller than Earth. There were three large continents, each one completely separate from the other. The planet had a large continuous ocean that was shallow and scattered with islands. The only habitations that were marked on the electronic map were Pioneer One, which was at an inland location on the largest of the three continents, and land marked for development around Pioneer One.

Garrett brought the ship down to a lower orbit. From here, he was able to activate the ship's radar. A large feature was two hundred miles away in front of the ship. Garrett pulled up to its level and sped up. In fifteen minutes a massive and complicated space station appeared in the distance. Garrett assumed that this was Pioneer Two. He slowed down and coasted by the massive aerial structure. This was several miles in every dimension. Garrett then remembered that the man he had previously spoken with said that Pioneer Two was orbiting above Pioneer One. Jackie was also in the cockpit, so Garrett instructed her to hold onto something. He pulled the joystick hard and flipped the plane upside down. From here, he could see the large Pioneer One dome.

"I see you have arrived," said a voice over the radio.

"Yeah. See you down on the surface."

"I'm not going down, but there are some hunters who will be sent to find you."

"Where do we meet them?"

"I guess if you are close enough to the Pioneer One dome then you can meet them at the main door."

"Where is the main door?"

"The main door is at ground level. It's a very large door."

"Okay. See you there, chief."

"I'm not a chief."

"It's a phrase where I come from."

"Oh."

Garrett, with the ship still inverted, pulled into a quick half loop and went into a slow descending helix. He waited until he was one thousand feet above the surface and leveled out. He decreased the speed to about one hundred miles per hour and began heading away from the dome. Garrett then pulled the ship into a tight turn and headed back toward the dome. He continued to descend to two hundred feet and slowed down even more. With one mile between himself and the dome, he shut down the main engines and switched to vertical thrust. He continued to coast forward until he was near the dome and once less than a half mile from the dome he pulled off on the vertical thrust throttle. The _Gallea _descended slowly, breaking through the canopy of trees, and came to a rest on the surface of the planet.


	10. X

Chapter Ten 

"Get your gear ready."

Garrett went back into the officer's room that he had been using during the trip and got his armor. He then joined Jackie at one of the exit doors and opened the door. Jackie already had her M4 out, and Garrett took out his Kalashnikov, which was loaded with solid uranium rounds. He turned on the safety and stepped out. There was a large animal standing nearby. It was on its hind legs and had short claws on its hands. This turned toward Garrett and began walking slowly in his direction. Garrett aimed his Kalashnikov at the beast's head and fired two shots. The beast dropped dead, and to Garrett's surprise it began decaying at a rapid pace.

"Damn. So much for vicious wildlife."

Garrett started off in the direction of the dome. The dome was not visible from the dense forest. This forest reminded Garrett of fighting in Taiwan against the Chinese forces. Garrett swept around his gun and spotted another beast that would be a problem. He kneeled down and fired a single shot through its head. The heavy uranium rounds were apparently highly effective, and a single shot downed the beast. Garrett continued forward in the heavy forest. The ship was a half mile from the perimeter of the dome, so Garrett quickly covered this distance. He fired at everything he saw, scoring kills in three or less shots. A few small flightless birds fled at the sound of the gunfire, but everything else was shot dead.

Garrett soon reached the wall of the Pioneer One dome. He began to walk around the side of the dome, which was several miles in width. After walking and engaging hostile native creatures for about two miles, Garrett walked up to the edge of the forest. There was a clearing here. He motioned to Jackie to walk around the clearing. Garrett began heading around the clearing as well. He saw four people standing in the clearing. Garrett told Jackie to stay back and provide cover in case these people proved to be hostile.

Garrett jumped down from the small earthen bunks that surrounded the clearing and trained his gun on one of the men in the group. The men all turned toward Garrett. Only one of them was holding a gun, and he aimed the gun at Garrett.

"Are you the people who came for me?"

"Yes. Now will you lower your weapon?"

Garrett lowered his weapon and motioned for Jackie to come join him.

"So you're the people who came for us?"

"Yes we are."

"So shouldn't you be watching out for any beasts that could attack you in here?"

"Not in this area. There's an electronic system set up on a limited area on this side of Pioneer One that prevents beasts from moving between the different areas when there are people down on the surface."

"Oh. Well should we get going?"

"Yes."

"By the way, I'm Garrett, and this is Jackie."

"I'm Bernie," said the man with the gun, "a ranger, and these are Helen and Charlie, both hunters, and Alex, a force."

"In that case, I'm Garrett, gunnery sergeant US army, retired, and this is…Jackie."

"US army?"

"Well, I was in my nation's military back on my planet."

"Is that where you got your gun?"

"No. That is a long and pointless story."

"Okay. Let's go."

"How are you supposed to get back up there? Do you have your own ship somewhere?"

"No. We are going to use the main teleporter between this area of the forest and Pioneer Two."

"How far is that from here?"

"Not very far. Follow us."

Garrett and Jackie fell in behind Bernie and started heading through the sectionalized forest area. The area was divided nearly into separate rooms with tall dirt walls and doors.

"What's with the crates?" Garrett asked, pointing the muzzle of his gun at a pair of boxes."

"Those are a part of the aid system that Pioneer One set up for settlers before it was wiped out. That consists of the division of the forest into areas around Pioneer One, the crates, and teleporters between areas. Various objects are sent to these crates in the same way that they are stored in your armor. You know how that works, right?"

"Yeah. What do you mean that Pioneer One was wiped out?"

"Just as we were establishing communications when Pioneer Two arrived in orbit, there was a large explosion down here."

"I don't see any marks from an explosion. There was an explosion here?"

"There was a huge explosion. A lot of people up on Pioneer Two could also see it. The only thing that seems to have resulted is that the beasts on the surface have become very violent. According to Pioneer One's reports on the wildlife, very few animals were violent. And then after the explosion everything was violent."

"So why don't you just keep that electronic system on all the time so you can keep these areas clear of the native wildlife?"

"The system can't be constantly turned on or else that will have a negative effect on the system. You would have to ask one of the military officers aboard Pioneer Two to find out more about that, but they won't say anything that can be of any help."

"I know what you mean."

Garrett could see what he guessed was the teleporter ahead of the group.

"It's just like an elevator. Just get on and select where you want to go."

"Okay."

Everyone got onto the teleporter. Helen pressed a button, and then Garrett experienced an extreme burning sensation. Several seconds later, he was inside a large room in a teleporter with everyone else.

"Okay, we're here. Now you two have to go use that teleporter over there. The Principal wants to see you."


	11. XI

Chapter Eleven 

"Excuse me sir, ma'am? Put those weapons away."

Garrett noticed a guard with a rifle standing on one side of the door who was talking to him. He put away his Kalashnikov and Jackie put away her M4. They walked over to the other teleporter and stepped into it. Once Jackie was on the teleporter he pressed the single button on this teleporter. The burning sensation returned, but Garrett was prepared for it this time. He reappeared in a long room with a clear dome over it. There were several people seated at desks at the end of the room. Garrett suspected that these people were the governing council of Pioneer Two. He walked up to the end of the room. One man began to speak.

"Are you two people the ones who claim to have arrived here from another planet?"

"Yes, we are."

"I was wondering if you will be living here."

"For the time being, at least, we will be up here."

"Would you like any assistance in getting settled here?"

"Do you use a form of currency aboard this ship?"

"Yes. So you need meseta?"

"Yes. I will need enough to purchase an apartment."

"Okay. The apartments aboard Pioneer Two are usually sold for about eighty thousand meseta, so I'll let you have one hundred thousand meseta."

The Principal told something to a secretary that was standing next to him, and the secretary left. Several minutes later she came back through the teleporter and handed a small card to Garrett.

"That has one hundred thousand meseta on it. You can use that to purchase an apartment, food, and anything else you can afford with it. You may leave now."

Garrett and Jackie headed back through the teleporter. Garrett asked one of the guards where the residential area was, and the guard pointed at a door. Garrett walked over to the door and it opened into an elevator. He went down the elevator for over a minute at a high speed and arrived at the street level of the residential area of Pioneer Two. This residential area was similar to a large city. Buildings of uniform height continued along a grid of streets. The only different buildings were the ones on either side of the platform that Garrett had just been on, which was one thousand feet above his head now. That platform was suspended between two of the buildings, relaying its importance. There were several guards stationed at the door of the elevator.

Garrett was able to find out that every building had a rental office in it. The lower floors were for businesses, and the rest of the height of the building was consumed by living space. Garrett was able to find an empty apartment in the second building he entered, and purchased it for seventy thousand meseta. The apartment was bare, but Garrett intended to bring items from the ship back to it, including furniture from the officers' quarters, cooking equipment from the kitchen and mess hall, and equipment for manufacturing his Kalashnikov's and M4's ammunition. Garrett and Jackie went back out of the apartment and returned to the elevator. However, a guard stepped in front of the door.

"Excuse me, sir. I need to see a permit before you can come up here?"

"What do I need a permit for?"

"Access to the teleporter is restricted for licensed hunters, military officers, and people who have registered with the guild for a mission."

"Damn. I come here from another planet and _that_ doesn't give me any special privileges?"

"No sir."

Garrett turned around. This city was similar to cities back on Earth. He quickly spotted a payphone and walked over to it. One of the prominent numbers, on a sticker above a number for collect calls, was that for the hunter's guild. Garrett dialed that number.

"Hunter's guild. What is the purpose of this call?"

"Hey. I need to arrange a mission, so can I get permission to come up there?"

"Do you have money?"

"Yes. I've got thirty thousand."

"Okay. What is your name?"

"Garrett. Now can you tell these guards to let me up?"

"Okay."

Garrett returned to the elevator. One of the guards answered a call on his radio, and stepped out of the way. Garrett and Jackie stepped onto the elevator and returned up to the platform. Garrett entered a room hanging off of the side of the platform that had a sign saying, "Hunter's Guild," above it. He walked up to the counter.

"Can I get a hunting license here?"

"How did you get up here?"

"I called and asked if I could set up a mission."

"But you want a hunter's license instead."

"I want whichever thing will allow me to get to my ship and get my things less expensively and more quickly."

"You can get a hunter's license for five thousand meseta, but that takes a month's course to complete."

"Damn. I guess I'll go for a mission first then."

"What is the mission?"

"I need to get down to my ship and take off a few things."

"And what is the reward?"

"Hell, they can take some of the weapons or armor from the ship's armory if they want."

"I need a number."

"Fine. How about three thousand meseta?"

"Okay. I'll let you know if anyone takes the job."

Garrett was about to leave the room, but a hunter walked up to the counter.

"What have you got open?"

"Hey!"

"What?"

"I'll give you three thousand and some arms and armor if you can take me down."

"Hold on. Can I do any other quests for more meseta?"

The woman behind the counter shook her head no.

"Okay. Are both of you coming?"

"Jackie, you coming?"

"Yeah."

"Both of us are coming."


	12. XII

Chapter Twelve 

Garrett and Jackie walked with the hunter over to the teleporter.

"I'm James, hunter."

"I'm Garrett, army, and this is Jackie."

"You're with the military?"

"I was."

"Good, so you know how to use weapons."

"Yes. Both of us were caught up in some combat earlier today."

"You were down there already today?"

"Affirmative. Wasn't as bad as I was told it was."

"So you had a good partner?"

"No. We were alone."

"How'd you get down alone?"

"Oh. We landed on Ragol on a different ship. We found it on another planet."

"So you're going back to this ship?"

"Yeah. We need to get some things. You can help yourself to some weapons from the armory if you wish."

"See you on the surface."

James hit a pad on the teleporter and several seconds later Garrett was on the surface of the planet again. James was taking out a pair of the laser swords.

"You two don't have weapons and you survived alone? I don't suppose you have gotten a level rating yet from the guild."

"I don't think so. And we do have weapons."

Garrett took out his Kalashnikov and Jackie took out her M4. Garrett checked the clip and chambered a round.

"I've never seen one of those before."

"That's because it came from back on Earth."

"Earth?"

"My planet."

"Does that use photon technology?"

"No lasers here."

Garrett could hear what he suspected was the electronic grid turning on. However, there were three of the large clawed beasts that had tunneled into the area that the three were in. James began to run towards the creatures, but Garrett quickly took aim at one of the creatures and shot it in the head. Jackie, whose M4 was set to fire three round bursts, fired three rounds into another one of the creatures as soon as it entered the room from a tunnel that it had dug. Garrett quickly fired two more shots and downed the third beast.

"Damn. Either those are very powerful guns or you've got a very high level rating."

"Oh, you haven't seen a powerful gun. If I had my Desert Eagle I could cut your head off."

"Desert Eagle?"

"It's a powerful handgun. There were very few guns on Earth that used lasers and photons."

"Oh. So the Desert Eagle was your most powerful gun?"

"No way. It was my most powerful handgun, but still the Berret sniper or the old M60 light machine gun or the Remington six-guage shotgun or the LAW antitank rocket launcher were far more powerful."

"So you had a lot of weapons."

"No. Most of those were the army's weapons. I only ever got my hands on the Remington and the Desert Eagle and this Kalashnikov out of the army."

"Oh. So, where is this ship?"

"Follow me."

Garrett climbed up into a tree and looked out. He could see where the hundred foot tall trees had been flattened by the ship, leaving a gap the shape of the ship. The tops of the fuselage and wings shone brightly in the sunlight. Garrett jumped out of the tree and began heading off in the direction of the ship. Jackie climbed over the hill and followed him.

"You have to stay inside the protected area!" James yelled.

James was only answered by several shots and the sounds of falling animals. He climbed over the wall and saw that Garrett and Jackie were waiting for him.

"No. No you don't. We have these guns, and these guns say it isn't dangerous here."

James followed Garrett and Jackie through the forest. Garrett stopped every few minutes and shot at distant beasts that were in their direction. He continued to walk forward, only himself and Jackie, with their firearms, seeing action.

"James, why are you using a sword? Shouldn't you use a gun?"

"I'm not very accurate, and I'm not used to working with rangers."

"Actually, I'm not with the Rangers. I was with the Green Berets."

"I mean rangers as in people that use guns primarily."

"Oh. But don't you have a gun that you can use?"

"I don't have one with me."

Garrett took out the rifle that he had taken from the ship and put it into James' hand.

"Can you use that?"

"No, sorry."

"What do you mean you can't use it? You just point and shoot!"

"I was only trained on how to use handguns and mechguns."

"Why don't they train you to use every weapon?"

"Because I chose to be a hunter instead of a ranger."

Garrett took the rifle back and put it back into his inventory. He continued on, firing occasionally at beasts that they came across. After walking for nearly a mile, the _Gallea_ came into view. Garrett continued to walk until he reached the ship's door. James was shocked to see such a large vessel just sitting on the floor of the forest. Garrett walked in and began transferring things into his armor to bring them to his apartment. He instructed James to go to the storage room that contained the armory and told him to take out any weapons or armor that he wanted. James returned, saying that he had taken a handgun and a brand. He now held a blue sword instead of the green one that he had previously held. Garrett and Jackie had transferred everything that they had wanted to take into their armor.

The three left the ship, closing the door once again. They followed a trail of bullet holes in trees and of pools of blood from dead animals until they reached the hill that opened up into the room where the teleporter was. There were more animals here, which Garrett allowed James to kill with his handgun. James was right about his accuracy, as several shots just sailed by the three beasts and struck the ground around them. The laser rounds also did not have much effect on the beasts, as when they hit they just caused shallow craters from burning. For contrast, Garrett shot a single round into the head of a beast. The heavy uranium shell flattened out, causing the shell to exit through the back of its head and leave an exit wound several inches across.

Garrett returned through the teleporter with Jackie and James. He went back to the residential area and took out each of the things he had brought with him, placing and arranging it in the four rooms in the apartment for the rest of the day.


	13. XIII

Chapter Thirteen 

Early the next morning, Garrett dialed up the number of the Hunter's Guild on the phone that he had taken from the ship. He decided that he needed to have constant access to the ship, and that the least costly way to do that was by getting a hunter's license. He found out that the next course was starting later that day. The lady, a different one this time, told him to bring the five thousand and that he didn't need to bring anything else. Jackie would also need access to the ship, so Garrett said that he was signing up two people for the course. The lady asked which way they were going to go. Garrett decided that he would take the ranger course since he wanted to get done quickly and since he was already highly trained in firearm use. Jackie, however, wanted to take the hunter course since she already knew how to use guns and wanted to do something different.

Later that day, Garrett and Jackie showed up at the Hunter's Guild. They each had the armor which they had taken from the ship, as well as everything which was stored inside the armors' storage systems. Once they were inside the reception area, they noticed that the people were separated into three groups. Most of the people were younger; they were only children in their teens and twenties. There were also the much older instructors. Garrett was able to point out the three groups, because each instructor was dressed differently, as were the four people who had formed the rescue party the earlier. Garrett went to his group, with the ranger instructor.

"So you're one of the people from another planet?"

"Indeed I am."

"You are probably not too knowledgeable about what we have here."

"I'm in the dark about a few things, but I've understood everything I've seen so far."

"Well, that's what I'm here for. You are a bit older than most of my students, though."

"I wasn't born and raised here like most of you were."

"No one here was born here."

"How is that?"

"Pioneer Two has been seven years in coming from our old planet."

"You mean Earth?"

"Is that your planet?"

"Yes, but is it yours?"

"No, it is not. And now I have to get this class started."

Garrett noticed that the two other groups were leaving the room. He fell in with his group and followed them into a classroom. There, the instructor introduced himself as Cole. He gave a basic introduction of what would happen through the course. He started with the weapons, picking up a small gun hanging on a rack.

"This is the handgun that you will be starting out with once you pass the course. It uses basic photon technology to fire a weak bullet. It has good range, but its range isn't greater than the perception range of most enemies unfortunately."

Cole returned the handgun to the rack and took down one of the rifles.

"This is a rifle. You can't use these yet since you need a greater accuracy than that which you have now. However, you can strike enemies from farther away than you can with a handgun with this. The rifle is also more powerful than the handgun and is more accurate."

Cole now took out a much larger gun.

"This is the shot. It uses these two spreader bars to spread five shots out. It is effective when used against groups of creatures. However, it requires a lot of accuracy to use it and is inaccurate in return. To prevent overheating, each of the individual shots is not very powerful as well. This is the weapon that I will be using in the field to bail you out in case you get in trouble."

He returned the shot to his own inventory and took a pair of handguns from the wall.

"These are mechguns. They are also not very powerful or accurate, but they can fire a total of nine shots before having to cool down. These are for the people who have a high power, since they will be doing nine weaker attacks as opposed to three stronger attacks. This is the last type of gun that I have to show you. However, there are also stronger classes of these types of weapons that I am aware of. You can visually tell by the different photon colors that they will have, and on your inventory they will show up differently. There are also blades and clubs that are used by the hunters and forces. You will be trained in a few of the blades, but since you wish to be rangers you will not be trained in most of them."

Cole also gave a quick rundown on the uniforms and armor, but Garrett didn't pay attention to this since he already knew about the armor. He was interested by how the armor used an electronic point shield system to disperse the power of an attack, and how it could be recharged in battle. Shortly after this a receptionist walked into the instruction room and silently gave a message to Cole.

"Okay, the hunters have returned from their preliminary training in the forest. Please line up to receive your things."

Everyone filed into a line and Cole handed them a uniform and armor for them to change into. Garrett, however, already was wearing armor, as well as his old camo from his days with the Green Berets, and did not accept the armor or uniform.

"I already have armor under this camouflage."

"You may keep your armor, but you need a uniform."

"Going out amongst hostiles in that bright colored piece of crap? I think not! I'd rather have this, my old uniform from the army."

"The army?"

"I was in the military back on Earth."

"Oh. What types of weapons did they have there?"

"If you were to face me if I had any one piece of my old equipment from Earth you would not be coming away alive. I'll have to show you."

Garrett followed the group to the teleporter once they had all changed. While they were changing, which was a lengthy process due to the armor, the hunter group arrived. Jackie was in that group. She briefed Garrett on what had happened. The groups each had to use a saber instead of using any guns.

"How did you do?"

"I was supposed to attack in a specific pattern, they said something about being able to do the most damage that way, but I just went for the fastest hits I could get. Then eventually there were a lot of enemies that had gotten into one room and I had to take out the assault rifle."

"What'd they think of that?"

"It was like they had never seen a gun before." I just put hell into that room on full auto and ran out the entire clip. The instructor didn't really have anything to say about that; I think she was a bit unnerved by the burst of fire."

Garrett's group finally all returned, and before they left Cole handed everyone a handgun. Garrett decided that he would try the handgun, but he wanted to use his larger rifle or Kalashnikov instead. Everyone went down in the teleporter. There were immediately a few enemies in the area. Everyone was scrambling to retreat toward the door, but Garrett was very close to the beast. He didn't have time to pull out a weapon, so he reflexively jumped up and dealt the beast, which was nearly his height, a kick to the face. The beast staggered back a few feet, and Garrett had enough time to select his Kalashnikov. He pulled back the bolt, chambering a tungsten round, and flicked off the safety. The beast was now close to him, so he put the gun to its head and fired. It dropped to the ground and began to rot away. Garrett then spun around and fired a long burst into the two others of the species on his left.

"Well, that is one hell of a gun there!"

Garrett put away the Kalashnikov and took out his handgun. He turned to Cole, who was holding the large spread.

"This was the second weakest rifle I had back on Earth. There were quite a few other weapons I had that would have easily cut that thing in half."

"You mean the boomas?"

"That's what you call those things?"

Garrett followed everyone through half a dozen other areas. Cole held him in reserve since he already knew what he was doing until everyone else had gone up against some enemy.

"You want to try again with your new gun this time?"

Garrett stepped into the area and the booma type beasts in there turned to attack him. He drew his handgun and aimed at the closest one's head. He pulled the trigger twice, both of the rounds glowing and flying out of the muzzle. However, the rounds did not have the effect of led, and merely struck the beast in the head and made it reel back. He fired three more times, and then the beast fell.

"I can't stand this thing!"

Garrett quickly switched to his rifle. He drew a bead on the closer living beast of the three remaining in the area. It was too close to need the scope on the rifle, but Garrett aimed right at its eye and fired once. He adjusted his aim after the recoil and noticed that its eye had been hit and that the eye had ruptured. He aimed at the forehead and fired another three times into the beast. It fell, but Garrett could feel the presence of another living beast that was too close. He turned and saw that one had managed to get within feet of him. It lifted up its arm to attack him in a move that Garrett had seen used on someone else, a simple vertical swipe. Garrett countered by jumping up and kicking the beast in the face. It did not stagger back since it already had forward momentum, so Garrett landed and fired off three quick shots. The booma flinched, and Garrett kicked it back before firing three more shots. There was one more left, but this one was still a far enough distance off that it could be engaged in a conventional matter.

"You know you could have taken the hit, right?"

"Yes, but I also knew I could avoid taking the hit pretty easily."

Cole didn't have a response to Garrett. He noticed that Cole and the students were confused about his style of fighting. Garrett followed everyone through three more areas and finally there were no more of the protected areas. Once there were no more areas to fight in, Cole opened a temporary teleporter and everyone went through it. Once everyone had changed and left, Cole turned to Garrett.

"I don't know what kinds of things are happening on Earth that have bred in you such a fighting style, but I think you can get your license right now. And I don't want you corrupting these kids; I don't think they are ready to be exposed to your style of fighting."

"It's pretty bad on Earth. But it's just completely different from this. There are too many people there. And they don't like each other."

"Is that why you left?"

"Not exactly, but it's a good enough reason."

Cole went into a back office in the guild area and returned with paperwork.

"This is your license. Enjoy it.


	14. XIV

Chapter Fourteen 

            Garrett returned to his apartment with his license and set out refilling the empty clips for his Kalashnikov with fresh rounds.  The next day, Jackie had to return to the guild to continue her course.  She was good with firearms, but she was training with blades now instead, which she had little previous experience with.  Garrett, however, went to the guild to see if he could get work.  He was told that every hunter could get a steady job providing weapons and other items collected on the surface to the shops.  They wouldn't get a large income per item, but Garrett had seen how many of the boxes were down there, and he had even seen weapons and items left behind as the corpses of enemies decayed.  Cole had explained that this was due to misguided radio waves from the Pioneer One computer system.  Garrett knew that this would be a secondary focus, since he could get other specific jobs from other customers who wished to go to the surface or to get something from there.

            Garrett asked if there were any jobs he could get, and the receptionist handed him an electronic screen similar to a tablet PC.  It displayed several names of customers across the screen, and what they were paying.  Garrett chose the top one, which was a client named Serge.  The screen then loaded more information about the mission.  Serge wanted to go find his son who had not returned from a visit to the surface and was willing to pay five hundred meseta for it.  The next mission down the list was the same thing, but for a different customer and a different price.  There were several things like this, so Garrett assumed that things were difficult on the surface.  However, he found a different mission.  This one was by a scientist to get a sampling of the native wildlife.  There was also another mission to go look for signs of what happened on the surface.  Garrett chose the mission by the scientist to since it was different from all of the other quests.

            The receptionist called up the scientist, whose name was Montague.  She spoke for less than a minute and then told Garrett that he would be able to wait in the reception area for Montague to arrive.  After waiting for nearly half an hour, a force walked through the door and to the receptionist.  The receptionist then told Garrett that his client had arrived.

            "Hello.  I am Montague."

            "The name's Garrett, pleasure."

            "What is it that you want me to do?"

            "I want you to take this sensor unit."

            Montague handed a small red box to Garrett.

            "What does this do?"

            "You attach it to your weapon, anywhere on it."

            "How is it supposed to collect data?"

            "It's a chemical sensor.  It'll let me have the chemical and biological structure of the creatures on Ragol."

            "It makes enough sense.  But how will it prevent from getting the chemicals from my body?"

            "This is programmed so it won't detect chemicals in the human or newman body."

            "Well, that might be a problem."

            "Why?"

            "I came from a different planet.  Through some time warp a ship from four thousand years in the future, which is this time, crashed on my planet three thousand years before I was born.  So I'm essentially from one thousand years in the past."

            "Let's see if it will detect anything from you.  Turn it on."

            Garrett hit the power switch on the side of the box.

            "It isn't indicating that it is taking in any chemicals, so you're fine."

            "Will it be affected by burning gunpowder?"

            "You are not using photon weapons?  Interesting."

            "I find that my assault rifle that is really from one thousand years ago is much more effective in its method of damage than the photon weapons."

            "I will have to see this rifle one of these days.  Perhaps I can learn from it."

            Garrett left the room, shutting off the box and putting it into his inventory.  He went through the teleporter and down to the forest.  There he quickly climbed on top of the divider between two areas.  The electrical field kept any of the beasts from climbing the divider themselves.  Garrett took out his Kalashnikov and attached the small box under the muzzle.  It magnetically clipped to the gun.  Garrett then jumped down and quickly disposed of two waves of boomas in the area he had come in through.  He glanced at the sensor and noticed that it had recorded information on two beasts.  Garrett checked the boxes in the room for items that could be sold to the hunters' shops.

            Garrett headed into the next room and several dogs turned towards him to attack.  Garrett quickly fired two shots into one's head and it fell over, dead.  He then noticed that the remaining four dogs were going around him in each direction.  The dogs would be on all sides in a few moments.  Garrett switched to full automatic fire and spun around, spraying a dozen shots across two beasts.  Before he could take out a fresh clip he heard one of the dogs jump, and he dropped to the ground as the dog flew over him.  Garrett ejected the empty clip from his gun and quickly swapped it for a fresh one from his ammo box.  He rolled out of the way as the other dog crashed down where he had been, and he chambered a round and fired a few shots into the two dogs.  One of the dogs left behind a saber upon its death, so Garrett picked this up and put it into his inventory with the rest of the things he took from this room.

            Garrett continued through the remaining divided rooms in the forest.  He picked up as many items as he could in the armor he had, and then he picked up a second piece of armor he found and filled that partially with items and slung it over his back.  He then returned through the teleporter, an hour after he had left.  Before he returned to Montague, he went to the items shop and walked up to one of the counters.  He sold almost every one of the items he had found, including the handgun which he had been given in the hunter's course.  He kept a few of the healing items he had found and one of the sabers.  After selling the items, Garrett returned to the Hunter's Guild and found Montague still there.

            "It took you long enough!"

            "Hey, I need to support myself by picking up and selling items I find too."

            "I've seen all of those weapons."

            "I would let you borrow this if I knew how long you needed it for."

            "I would only need this for a few minutes.  I have equipment in my lab that functions in the same way as the armor you have does, but when it rebuilds the items it rebuilds them with new atoms and molecules.  Heh.  The government doesn't want me having that since they think I might mass dupe something good, but most hunters are just grunts that want to use old technology.  And you can't forget that the government is also keeping watch on my lab.  They'll arrest me if they see me coming out with a lot of weapons."

            "Do you want to do this now?"

            "Sure, give me a few minutes."

            Garrett showed Montague the function of the rifle and how the clips and ammunition worked.  Montague left and half an hour later he returned with Garrett's original Kalashnikov.  Garrett took it back and stored it.

            "I like you.  I'll have to let you know when I need any help down on the surface again."


	15. XV

Chapter Fifteen 

            Garrett returned to his apartment to reload weapons.  Since he now knew that Montague was a scientist who worked with weapons, he thought over the concept of having Montague make him some things like his old weapons.  He also thought about having new weapons made superior to his old ones from Earth.  Garrett envisioned a high caliber rifle with a better velocity than the Berret sniper, and with incendiary shells.  He also pictured an assault rifle like the trusty old M-14, which he was privileged to be able to use back in a few battles instead of an M-4 or M-16.  He also thought of a rocket launcher with high explosive rockets to use for extreme applications.  There were still several more hours of daylight on the surface, so Garrett returned to the guild to see if there were any more open missions that he could do.

            "We have one special mission that we're having trouble getting people for."

            "Why is that?"

            "The customer wants four people to form a rescue party.  All we know is that it is for a rescue party."

            "Well, how much will I get when the group finishes?"

            "You'll get ten thousand meseta if you complete the mission."

            "Damn, I'm in.  How many more people do you need?"

            "You will be the last person if you accept it."

            Garrett was about to take the electronic panel to register for the mission, but he felt a tap on his back and turned around to see Charlie, one of the hunters who had been in the party to rescue him.

            "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

            "Why not?"

            "You know who is offering that quest?"

            Garrett glanced at the paper and replied.

            "Someone by the name of Jardem."

            "Do you know who that is?"

            "No, would you mind enlightening me?"

            "Rumor has it that he is closely affiliated with the military."

            "Hell, I was in the military before I left Earth.  Thank you for your concern, but I am going to take this mission."

            Garrett signed up for the quest, and then decided to hang around in the reception area for everyone to arrive.  Within half an hour, the group in the hunter course returned, so Garrett was talking with Jackie about what she had been doing on the surface.  She said that she was becoming better with the various types of blades, and that she was not using her assault rifle nearly as much as she had been the previous day.  However, she was tired and was going back to the apartment, so she did not stay long to talk.

            Garrett did not have to wait much longer before a couple hunters arrived.  One of them Garrett recognized as Bernie.  He did not know the other one.  Soon another hunter arrived, and then a force came.  The receptionist called for the four hunters to come to see Jardem.

            "I'm Jardem.  I have called you all here because I want to send a mission to break into Pioneer One.  I want you to see if there are any survivors inside the dome.  I presume you are Garrett?"

            "Yes, I'm Garrett.  US Army, retired."

            "So you are from the military?"

            "Yes I am."

            "Good, if your military is anything like ours then you should be able to help."

            "Where exactly are we supposed to look for survivors?"

            "You have to find a teleporter to a sectionalized area of the forest.  This area, however, is on the side of the dome instead of being a distance from it."

            "I think I was there before."

            "Yes, but there has been a problem."

            "What is that?"

            "The teleporter has been knocked out of commission as I've heard.  It hasn't been useable in the past couple days."

            "Okay.  Then I guess we should be going."

            "I am going to have to come with you in case I need to repair the teleporter."

            "Okay."

            Garrett headed to the teleporter with Bernie, Jardem, and the other hunter and force.  They went down to the surface, and Garrett turned to get a bearing on the dome in the distance.  However, everyone else headed off forward without him, so Garrett took out his Kalashnikov and headed after them.  The other four had already cleared the first room, and Garrett caught up to them in the second one.  He was surprised to see a fireball leap from the force's fingertips and into a booma, felling it.  Bernie was working on a large insect flying above the group.  Jardem and the other hunter were cutting into another booma with their swords.  Garrett noticed a wolf jump from its concealments among the foliage, flying toward the back of the force.  He aimed his Kalashnikov and fired a burst into the wolf.  The power of the hits knocked it off to the side, missing the force.  Garrett then finished off the wolf with a head shot.  Another one had jumped out and was circling Bernie, so Garrett directed a shot into its head.  Nothing else appeared in the room.

            "That was intense," said Jardem, "I hope there isn't anything else like that."

            The next area was a hallway, so Garrett followed behind the others with the force.

            "How did you do that?"

            "How did I do what?"

            "Fire that fireball."

            "You mean the foie?"

            "I guess so."

            "I learned how to do that before when I became a force.  I was taught how to focus my energy."

            "That is interesting.  What is your name?"

            "I'm Desora, FOnewearl if you didn't know."

            "I'm Garrett, US Army."

            "So you work with the military too?  US Army?  I never heard of that military."

            "It was the military on Earth.  Most powerful Democratic one at that.  They had things that were amazingly powerful.  They couldn't destroy the world, but the Air Force with its ballistic nuclear missiles probably could."

            "Missiles?"

            "Yes, missiles.  These missiles had power that you wouldn't be able to realize."

            "How powerful were they?"

            "Well, the missiles were several stories high, and they had several separate warheads that could each destroy this dome several times over."

            "So you killed everyone on Ragol?"

            "No, I did not.  Is there something I missed?"

            "When Pioneer Two entered orbit and set up communications with Pioneer One, and then there was a massive explosion around the dome."

            "No one on Earth knows about this planet as far as I know."

            "Oh.  Okay."

            Garrett continued with the group through several other rooms.  There was eventually a teleporter, but it was damaged and casting off sparks.  Jardem walked up close to it and inspected it.

            "I am sorry, but I cannot fix this.  The problem here is fixable, but there is also a problem on the other teleporter that this one links to by the looks of things here.  However, there is one other thing we can do.  It will be risky, but we can go over the barrier and walk to the dome.  There, since the other sectioned area is right up against the side of the dome, we can walk around the dome and find it."

            "I've been outside the borders of this area three other times, so I'm fine by that."

            "Who else is with me?"

            "If we go out there then there will be a limitless amount of hostiles though!"

            "Fine, how about if I triple your meseta income from this?"

            "Okay, I'll go," replied Bernie.

            "Fine by me.  I've been needing some new things anyways," replied John, the other HUmar in the group.

            "What about you, Desora?"

            "Fine, if everyone else is going it can't be too dangerous.  These missiles Garrett was talking about should keep us safe."

            "Missiles?"

            Garrett sighed about the missiles, since Desora had misinterpreted him as having said that he possessed them.  Garrett counted the rounds left in his Kalashnikov's clip and then volunteered to go over the wall first.  He jumped up on top of the wall and instructed Bernie and Desora to join him on top of the wall to provide cover fire.

            "Okay now.  John, Jardem, go over.  We will go in a wedge, you to as the points, Desora as the tip, and Bernie and me filling it in."

            "Hey!  Who here is paying you all?"

            "I beg to ask if you have a better idea."

            John and Jardem went over the wall, and several beasts began approaching.  Garrett told Desora to go over, and Bernie went over, and Garrett assembled the wedge.  Everyone began moving forward.  Garrett was firing head shots into the beasts with his Kalashnikov, felling them all in one or two hits.  He let Bernie and Desora work on the enemies that Jardem and John were engaging on the flanks.  Everyone continued moving forward at a slow pace.  He could not see the dome yet through the dense trees.  However, he did spot a stream, which had banks relatively clear of vegetation.

            "Everyone break formation and go down to the stream!  Only attack something if it's in front of you!"

            Garrett headed down into the stream, with everyone else behind him.  He stopped, steadying himself on a fallen tree as everyone else ran past it, and picked off several boomas and other enemies out ahead of them along the stream with head and neck shots.  Several boomas began heading down along the bank of the stream around Garrett, and he ducked under the tree and ran forward to catch up with the others.  Everyone continued forward in such a fashion.  Garrett would fire and displace, and everyone else would engage enemies that came down to the bank of the stream from the ground above it from up close, with their combined strength overwhelming enemies in ones or twos.

            Eventually everyone reached a clearing.  Here Garrett got up from the bank of the stream and could see the dome rising above the trees ahead of him.  The stream was heading roughly toward the dome, so he decided to follow the stream for a lack of reference points in the heavily wooded areas.  He shouted at everyone to keep going up the stream, and then rejoined them in his firing and displacing maneuvers.  Garrett decided that he would have to have Montague make him a light machine gun, since swapping clips in his Kalashnikov every thirty rounds was a major pain.  However, the gun was getting the job done, since it did penetration as opposed to burning damage to the beasts.

            The group continued forward, pushing through hundreds of hostile beasts, when they finally reached a tall earthen wall.  Everyone jumped over, and then more enemies began going over the wall after them.

            "Oh no, that's right.  I forgot that you have to go through the teleporter to make the grid system activate," Jardem stated.  "Garrett, you go with Bernie and Desora forward and try to get to the door up ahead.  I don't think the beasts can get up the wall to the platform there as easily!  I am going to try and find the teleporter with John and activate the grid system."

            "Well hurry up and do that!  Everyone, get out of this room and I'll catch up to you!"

            Garrett began unloading automatic fire into the veritable wall of beasts that was climbing over the wall of the area.  His gun clicked empty, and he displaced to change clips.

            "The door won't open!"

            "Then climb over the wall!"

            Garrett continued firing into the group of enemies.

            _I could use a photon gun.  Then I won't have to reload.  But they overheat._

            Garrett climbed up the next wall and shouted at Bernie, who was in the other room fighting off a much smaller number of enemies.

            "What happens when the photon weapons overheat?"

            "They go critical.  I haven't seen it happen but I've heard of it!"

            "Thanks."

            Garrett saw dozens of enemies in the area had come from.  They were all heading for him.  Garrett took out his handgun, turned it on, and began firing.  Three shots, and he should have stopped, but he kept firing.  Seven shots and he could see the chemical reaction glowing more intense.  Nine shots and he could see the air disturbance in front of the muzzle.  Twelve shots and he could see cinders rising in front of the muzzle.  Fifteen shots and the shuttering mechanism on the muzzle burst into flames and jammed.  A concentrated beam of laser began emitting from the muzzle, scorching through the booma that Garrett had been firing on previously.  Garrett threw the gun into the area and heard the reaction tube crack.  Garrett rolled backward into the room with Bernie and Desora as a huge flash of light and pressure wave emanated from the room, followed by bodies of dead animals and a column of soil and smoke.

            "Damn.  Quick, find more guns that I can do that with!"

            The three checked the room and found two more handguns, which Garrett took.  He put away the Kalashnikov to dual wield the guns.  The grid system suddenly began to hum to life, and Garrett felt that it was now relatively safe.


	16. XVI

Chapter Sixteen 

            Garrett, Bernie, and Desora continued through several more rooms and they finally met back up with John.

            "Where did Jardem go?"

            "He said he was going back to get support.  The teleporter wasn't really broken here; it works."

            "Okay.  Now I think we should just go see if we find any survivors here."

            "You still trust Jardem?"

            "I don't like that Jardem guy much now, but who knows what we might find while we're here.  This place has been out of access for a couple days now."

            "I think Jardem sabotaged the teleporter.  He wanted us to go through the deep forest and tried to get us killed!" Desora added.

            "That is very possible.  Now let's get going."

            Garrett led the three others through a couple more rooms, fighting much smaller numbers of enemies.  Garrett only had a few full clips left for his Kalashnikov, so he stuck with the dual handguns through these rooms.  The group finally reached a smaller teleporter that led up to the platform that was actually part of the Pioneer One dome.  There was a door into the dome here, but it was not functioning.

            "You think Jardem did this too?" Desora asked.

            "No.  He wanted us to be killed for some reason, but I think for that same reason he would have wanted to get at whatever is in Pioneer One.  If he is the evil bum he seems to be, then he would have wanted to get in there.  There must be a lot in there."

            "Yeah.  Let's go back now though."

            Everyone returned to the teleporter and went up to Pioneer Two.  There, Jardem wasn't there, which was lucky for him since Garrett intended to drag him off for interrogation.  However, everyone's thirty thousand meseta was there.

            "Why did he leave the money if he wanted us dead?" John asked.

            "Because he didn't think we would live," Bernie replied.

            Garrett headed down to his apartment.  There, he began the long task of replacing his spent ammunition with newly manufactured ammunition, and of refilling his Kalashnikov's clips.  He had used up all but two of his clips in the running battle through the forest.  Garrett knew that reloading the hundreds of rounds into clips and making hundreds of new rounds would take several hours to complete, so he did not plan to do anything the next day on the surface.

            Garrett finished restocking his supply of shells for his Kalashnikov by the middle of the next day.  He did not feel like undertaking any missions by that time, but he had another idea.  He went up to the guild again and asked the receptionist if she could send a message to Montague to contact him.  Once she had sent the message Garrett returned to his apartment and fell asleep.  He was awakened after several hours by a ringing phone.

            "It's Montague.  You called?"

            "You know the assault rifle I let you borrow?"

            "Yes, that rifle is pretty powerful."

            "Well, would you want to make another gun like that?"

            "What is the difference?"

            "This is a better gun."

            "I see.  Do you know where my lab is?"

            "No, where is it?"

            "Just meet me in an hour in the guild area."

            Garrett hung up the phone and found something to eat before heading up to the guild area.  There, he waited as he watched the surface of Ragol gradually became dark with the setting sun.  He waited for several more minutes and Montague arrived.  Montague immediately directed him to go down the teleporter to the surface.  Once there and after clearing the first area he directed Garrett to go over the wall.  There, Montague began leading him through the area right outside the divider, firing at beasts as they approached.

            "That data you collected was helpful.  It allowed me to develop a normal photon rifle into one with much more powerful photons.  I haven't finished the development but there still seems to be much more potential in this photon development."

            "Are we going somewhere?"

            "There is a small weather outpost of Pioneer One around here.  It is not in the grid system that we just left, but it has its own grid that I hope still works."

            Garrett continued to follow Montague through the outer perimeter of the developed forest area.  After several minutes of walking he was able to spot a small building through the trees.  Montague altered his course slightly and headed directly to it.

            "I'm going to need some cover fire while I unlock this building again."

            Garrett readied his Kalashnikov and began to snipe far off enemies that were approaching through the forest with it.  There were dozens of beasts that he could see coming from a great distance.  Garrett continued to pick them off one by one for several minutes, holding them at bay in a tense deadlock.  Garrett finally heard a door slide open and he turned and fell back into the weather outpost.  There was a hall and several rooms in here.  However, there was no meteorological technology that Garrett noticed in any of the rooms.

            "This doesn't look like any kind of weather station I've seen before.  Where's all the equipment?"

            "There is no equipment.  This place is really here so any people caught up by hostile wildlife could run here for safety."

            "Why did we come here?  Are you here so the government won't find us?"

            "Yes.  This is actually a secondary exit from my lab when I think the government is watching.  I can just come up from the main teleporter and the people watching will be forced to assume that I have come up from being on the planet's surface and that I wasn't in the lab at all."

            Garrett followed Montague to a large walk in closet.  There he had set up a teleporter at some other time.  Garrett stepped onto it and soon reappeared in an extremely cramped room.  Montague pushed aside the door, and entered into a closet.  When Garrett closed the door behind him he noticed that it was well concealed; it was part of a shelving unit in the closed. 

            "Now what is it that you want to make?"

            "I need a full automatic machine gun."

            "You mean like what you had?"

            "Not exactly.  That is supposed to be small and light for the average infantry.  What I want is a machine gun, not an assault rife."

            "What do you want changed?"

            "Do you have any technical drawings of the gun?"

           "Yes, would you like to see the drawings?"

            Garrett followed Montague to a large computer, which he opened a file on.  It was a three dimensional technical blueprint of the Kalashnikov.  Garrett asked if he could modify the drawing, and Montague gave him permission.  Garrett modified the Kalashnikov with a larger chamber to accommodate full sized .30-06 ammunition.  He also modified the action to process belt-fed ammunition.  The barrel of the gun was also lengthened considerably to provide more accurate fire, and a bipod was added.  As an afterthought Garrett designed a smooth barrel switching system which gave the gun a second barrel on a revolving cylinder.

            "This is it.  I modified this from the old German light machine guns."

            "Does it use the same ammunition?"

            "No it doesn't.  Can I change the ammunition?"

            Montague accessed another drawing, and Garrett lengthened the cartridges to their appropriate length, and designed the belt system and a drum to house the belts in.

            "Can you make this?"

            "Yeah, just wait.  You want one, right?"

            "I only need one of the machine guns, but I will need five of the drum clips.  I have a machine at my apartment that I can make the ammunition with for absolutely free."

            Montague took over the computer and spend a couple minutes.  Another machine turned on, and after several seconds Montague opened it and the machine gun was there.  Garrett took out the gun and cocked back the bolt to check that it worked.  It worked.  Montague then set something again and five of the drum clips were almost instantaneously created.  Garrett loaded one of the belts into the gun.

            "If you need to get any more belts of ammunition you can just go in here through that outpost.  Just don't go through if there is a red light next to the teleporter, since that would mean that there are military officials searching in my lab."

            Garrett left through the teleporter and was soon out in the outpost again.  He flicked off the gun's safety and stepped outside.  There were still several boomas and other beasts nearby, dozens of them.  Garrett quickly stepped back inside.  He checked the rooms in the outpost and found one with an access hatch to the room.  He climbed up to the roof and lied down on one corner.  Garrett switched the machine gun to semi automatic and fired on a nearby booma.  The more powerful round slammed into its head for a quick kill.

            Garrett systematically fired round after round with the machine gun until he had felled about two dozen beasts.  He then took out his Kalashnikov so he could conserve the ammunition for the machine gun, and he stored the machine gun.  He jumped down from the roof and landed lightly, springing forward as he landed and heading toward the secure area.  After a quick run of about a mile, Garrett ran up the wall and into the secure area.  Once there he headed back to his apartment through the main teleporter.


	17. XVII

Chapter Seventeen 

            Once Garrett was back at his apartment it was late in the day, he just felt like falling asleep.  The next morning, however, he felt like he was ready to go back down on the surface.  He quickly reloaded ammunition into the partially spent belt of his machine gun, and into the clips that he had expended from his Kalashnikov, and went up to the Hunter's Guild.  There he looked again through the missions he could choose.  There seemed to be an ever increasing number of rescue missions available.

            "Can I take more than one mission at a time?"

            "I don't think anyone has done that before."

            "Can I or can I not?"

            "I guess you can get the rewards for each quest you complete if you complete the objectives for several quests."

            "Okay.  I'm going to try to wrap up as many of these rescue missions as possible."

            Garrett went down the teleporter.  He decided that he would take out his Kalashnikov since he did not suspect coming across large numbers of beasts if he was staying inside the grid defended area.  He did not think other hunters of a more normal upbringing would think to go outside the boundaries of the secure area.  Garrett continued through each section around where he had teleported down.  In one of the areas there was the other teleporter that went closer to the dome, but Garrett ignored that until he had checked the entirety of the forest area.  He did not see any people there while he was down there, so he went through the teleporter.  Garrett continued through several of the partitioned roomlike areas that were near the dome, but he did not come across any enemies there.  There were only pools of blood where the rapidly decaying bodies had rotted away.

            Garrett stepped into a room and saw two hunters hacking into a group of beasts.  There were at least six or seven boomas and dogs surrounding the group, and Garrett could see that they were about to become the next two victims.

            "Duck now!"

            Garrett changed to his machine gun.  He flipped off the safety and set it to full automatic.  He crouched by a nearby tree branch that was jutting from a stump, resting the bipod on the stump.  Garrett put the group in the iron sights of his gun and mashed the trigger.  Rounds sprayed rapidly from the muzzle of the gun, and Garrett swept it slightly from side to side to make sure that each of the beasts was hit.  Garrett fired over half of his clip and stopped.  All of the beasts had either fallen or were falling.

            "It's all clear!"

            Garrett quickly switched to the cool barrel on his gun and walked over to the two hunters.  They had not been hit by the barrage of gunfire fortunately, but they still seemed to be in shock from it.  Garrett recognized one of the hunters as Helen, the HUnewearl who had been in the party to recover him and Jackie.

            "Hello, Helen.  And who is this?"

            "I'm Anthony, a HUmar."

            "Nice to meet you."

            "Thanks for saving our asses."

            "It's not a problem with my little friend here."

            "What kind of gun is that?"

            "This is a light machine gun."

            "You mean it has light damage?"

            "No, it can be pretty destructive."

            "I mean light damage like the light attribute."

            "Oh.  No, it is just a machine gun that is lightweight and man-portable."

            "So it does regular damage."

            "By my standards, yes.  By yours, no.  It doesn't use photons."

            "Are you down here looking for someone?"

            "I'm looking for anyone that people set up quests to find."

            "You want to join us?"

            "Sure.  I can take care of any enemies at long range."

            "Please don't.  Just let us get the experience.  You can shoot them, but let us hit them too."

            "Then that is just a waste of ammunition for this."

            Garrett swapped his machine gun for his photon rifle and continued to follow Anthony and Helen.  He fired occasionally at enemies with the accurate rifle, distracting them from the hunters up close who were cutting into them with their swords.  After going through several more rooms he reached the warp up to the platform.  There were still no signs of people.  However, Garrett pointed out on the platform that there were a couple hunter items sitting on the platform that were not from any boxes there or beasts that they had slain.  Helen picked them up.  They were nothing out of the ordinary, but where they were was not right.

            Garrett moved into the next area of the platform.  This was the one with the door, which was still stuck closed.  However, there was also another teleporter past this door.

            "Where do you think that goes?"

            "I don't know.  I didn't see that there before."

            "You want to go through?"

            "We didn't see anyone else along the way so I guess we have to.  And this is new, so there might be some good things down there."

            "Okay then, we'll go.  But I don't know what's going to be down there, so if things aren't good then you fall back to the teleporter and I'll cover you."

            Garrett switched to his machine gun and stepped onto the teleporter.  Helen and Anthony stepped onto the teleporter and activated it.  Soon they appeared in a cavernous underground dome.  Garrett flinched slightly as he saw bodies strewn about the ground.  He hoped that they were in a comatose state from their armor's hardware but did not know for sure.  Garrett walked to a nearby body.  The body was that of a FOnewearl.  Her cane was thrown just out of reach, and she had a light pulse.  However, Garrett was most concerned about the terrain around.  As opposed to a cave which he would have expected, which would have been extremely dark and damp.  This cave was not wet at all.  It was bone dry, and it reminded Garrett of the desert expanses of northern Africa.  It was also not very dark.  Light emitted from the remnants of small fires, where the soil itself had been burned.  There was also light from around the teleporter, and from around a door at one end of the cave.  Garrett could count at least eight bodies in the room, at least that he could see.  It was dim in the room, so Garrett couldn't see any of the farther off bodies.

            The teleporter suddenly closed.  Garrett checked and it said that it was an emergency shutoff due to nearby hostiles.  Garrett could hear a faint sound now, which was not unlike the sound of an approaching tank battalion.  The noise was a grating, groaning noise that Garrett could feel more than he could hear.

            "Everyone get to the door!"

            Garrett followed Helen and Anthony as they ran across the middle of the room.  He swept his gun from side to side and hoped that he would be pointing in the right direction when whatever was coming arrived.  Helen saw a large crater and walked over to it.  This, however, was not a crater.  This was a hole which extended into blackness hundreds of feet down.  Garrett pushed her away from the edge, forcing her toward the door with his gun's barrel.  He himself looked into the hole.  This amplified the noise, so Garrett knew that this was where whatever was coming was coming from.  Garrett continued to back away from the hole and toward the door.  However, the door too was locked.  Garrett arrayed Helen and Anthony on his sides, and he himself got prone, resting himself and his gun's bipod on the hot, sandy soil covering most of the area.

            Garrett waited for a few minutes, but was not disappointed.  In a heavy shroud of dust, something large broke through the hole.  However, the dust settled quickly under a downdraft.  Garrett looked up from where he expected to see something, on the ground on the side of the hole, and was startled to see a huge beast.  This beast landed, and Garrett realized that it was like a dragon right out of a video game or movie.  Garrett immediately adjusted his aim and mashed the trigger.  The rounds flew from the barrel of his gun, and Garrett saw the dragon shake its head as the rounds struck.  However, the gun clicked empty.  Garrett noticed that the dragon did not seem to have taken any damage.  Instead it merely was alerted to Garrett's presence.

            "Both of you try to break open that door!"

            "How do we do that?"

            "I don't care how!"

            Garrett stored the empty clip and belt and loaded a new clip onto his machine gun.  The dragon began to head in his direction and he decided to hold his fire.  Right behind him, Helen and Anthony were trying various things to make the door open.  Garrett decided that it was best to distract the dragon.  He got up and began running along the perimeter of the cavern.  Once he had gone off to the dragon's left, since it was still heading toward Helen and Anthony, he again went prone.  He aimed again at the dragon's head and opened fire.  He fired two short bursts and the rounds hit their mark.  The dragon turned and began lumbering toward Garrett.  He fired another long burst into the front of the dragon's head, but was dismayed as several of the rounds deflected up off of its sloped head.

            The dragon reared its head back and to Garrett's surprise a line of flame leapt from its mouth toward Garrett.  Garrett jumped to the side, hitting the ground near a body.  He knew the person, a RAmarl, was still alive so he grabber her by the neck of her armor and draped her over one shoulder.  Garrett brought this body, now running slowly, to Helen and Anthony and put it down there.

            "If you get this door open, get anyone you see here out through there!"

            Garrett moved back out to engage the dragon.  Now he knew he had to watch out for its breath and therefore just kept it turning in his direction from an uncomfortably close range with quick bursts from his machine gun.  He knew he didn't have much ammunition; he only had about one hundred fifty rounds left and then he would have to resort to his Kalashnikov, which was not nearly as strong.

            _Could one of the handguns exploding injure this dragon?_

            "Get everyone out to the edges of the cavern!"

            Helen and Anthony ran from the door and began dragging the roughly fifteen bodies that Garrett thought there were out to the edges of the cavern if they weren't already there.  Garrett began to fire the handgun at the dragon.  He fired slowly and repeatedly, letting the dragon get closer to him the entire time.  The handgun finally began its final stage of overheating, and Garrett threw it at the dragon.  The handgun hit the ground several yards in front of and to one side of the dragon, but the sandy soil caught it and prevented it from getting any closer.  The handgun exploded, about fifteen feet from the dragon's head.  Garrett watched the white flash and shockwave emanate from the strangely powerful explosion of the gun.  As the scattered sediment settled, Garrett was dismayed to see that the dragon was still alive.  He could see that it was injured, there appeared to be a crater the size of a dinner plate in its neck where some shrapnel had hit it.

            "How are we supposed to get out of here now?"

            "I have one more handgun.  Get those bodies away from the door!"

            Garrett took out his other handgun and he began firing at the dragon.  This time he backed away toward the door.  Once the handgun finally began burning, Garrett dropped it next to the door and began running.  He kept running as the he saw the room light up from the explosion.  Garrett jumped as he was caught in the shockwave, and tumbled to a stop twenty feet away.  He got up and quickly ran toward the door.  The blast had forced one of the two sliding doors in several feet, leaving a gap that a person could easily step through.

            "Forget about the bodies for now!  We can come back for them when we are ready to face this thing!"

            The three stepped through the door.  They were now in a much smaller cavern chamber.  There was a door on the other side of this, which slid open to an expansive cavern that indicated there was much more ahead of that.  Fortunately, though, there was a teleporter here.  Anthony quickly set this up to take them to Pioneer Two, and the three stepped onto the teleporter and were soon in Pioneer Two.


	18. XVIII

XVIII 

Garrett went straight back to his apartment. There he once again reloaded his ammunition. He wondered about how he would solve the problem with the dragon.

_I only injured it when I destroyed that handgun. That same handgun could kill dozens of other beasts but not a damn dragon. What I need is an armor piercing weapon. Could I design one of those in Montague's lab?_

The next day Garrett went through the forest to the outpost outside the protected area. He had to wait for an hour for the red light near it to turn off, time which he spent firing on beasts with his photon rifle from the roof of the structure. However, eventually the red light was gone and Garrett headed up to Montague's lab.

"I think you'll be interested about what I did yesterday."

"What is that?"

"I went down to the forest searching for some hunters who had been lost."

"Did your new gun work?"

"It was very effective on almost anything?"

"What was it ineffective against?"

"I found a new teleporter right outside Pioneer One. This went to an underground cavern."

"That is an amazing discovery! What is there?"

"I could not look. I found all the dead hunters. They had been killed by a dragon."

"There are dragons?"

"Yes. There is one big dragon."

"That's interesting. You know, there were dragons back on Coral, our old home planet."

"Do you know how I can defeat this one?"

"With a photon weapon since the burning damage penetrates deep, you have to just keep shooting at it until it sustains enough damage."

"That isn't quick enough. I propose that I make a weapon like what we used back on Earth against armored vehicles."

"What kind of weapon is this?"

"This is a black powder rifle of a high caliber. It is larger than even the machine gun I made before, and it fires a much larger round at a much slower rate. This round is also much more powerful than the machine gun's rounds, and they are filled with explosive."

"This sounds like a fantastic weapon."

"Could I spend some time here and design this?"

"Yes, but if anyone comes you must conceal your work and head back down the teleporter."

Garrett opened up the design program on the computer and began designing the gun he wanted to make. He decided that he would make a gun as opposed to the normal antitank weapon, which was a rocket launcher, since the rounds would be smaller and faster to fire and reload. He created the gun to be a large and heavy weapon. It would be slow to fire and have incredible recoil, but he did not intend to use it against masses of enemies that he could dispose of with lesser weapons. Garrett decided that this gun would be a large rifle, with a five foot barrel with a blowback design. It would have a thirty millimeter bore, but instead of having the small powder charges like in grenade launchers, which lobbed their shells at low speeds, the cartridge was essentially a scaled up rifle cartridge. The gun was semi automatic and featured a large composite stock with an attached bipod. The shells themselves were over four inches long and filled with not high explosive, but the chemicals that were in the photon guns since they seemed to be more powerful, and the casings were nearly a foot long. The clips were also extremely large, and the bolt had a simple pulley system built into the back of the stock since the gun would be nearly impossible to cock without it.

Garrett selected the feature to start building the gun. He walked over to the device that built the guns and picked up the heavy rifle. It was extremely large, of course. Garrett now made ten of the clips for the gun, as well as enough ammunition for the ten clips. He also made five more drums and belts for his machine gun. Satisfied that he was ready to fight off the dragon, Garrett headed back through Montague's teleporter and into the forest. There, he decided to try out the rifle. He stepped onto the top of the building and sighted a distant Hildebear. Garrett fired the rifle, and it was better than he expected. The roar of just one shot cracked through the forest. The barrel recoiled, but even with that feature the recoil of the rifle nearly knocked Garrett off balance. He watched the round fly into the giant monkey. It struck and there was just a flash of light in that spot and a column of debris rising two dozen feet into the air. The Hildebear was destroyed completely.

Satisfied, Garrett switched to his machine gun and headed through the forest to the protected area near the dome. Garrett pushed his way easily through the enemies until he met up once again, to his surprise, with Helen and Anthony.

"Are you trying to fight the dragon on your own?"

"That is the only way I can think of getting to rescue all those people."

"Well I'm coming with you."

"You weren't able to do anything last time with that machine gun, so what do you think you can do now?"

"I have a better gun."

"Let's see it."

Garrett took out the massive rifle that he had been keeping stored. He could see through the looks on Helen's and Anthony's eyes that they were convinced that he did indeed have a better gun. They continued forward through the remaining few rooms remaining in their path in the forest. Garrett stayed in the rear with his photon rifle to conserve the ammunition of his better weapons.

Finally Garrett stood on the platform of the Pioneer One dome. He quickly reached the teleporter. There, he took out his immense black powder rifle and went down the teleporter. This time he knew that the dragon was coming. Garrett once again moved to the door and lay down in front of it. His rifle was aimed at the hole where the dragon was inevitably going to come through. Soon the dragon came, making the same entry it did before. However, once it landed Garrett searched for a good target to shoot at. He wanted to go for a head shot, but was concerned that the sloped head would merely deflect the shells. There were no good targets from the front view of the dragon.

"Helen, Anthony."

"What?"

"I need you to go around the side of the dragon. Then if it turns to attack you I will be able to get off a good shot or two at it."

Helen and Anthony began running across to the dragon's side. Garrett continued to watch the dragon through the scope of his gun, which was now zoomed out due to the close range. It seemed like an eternity as Helen and Anthony passed through the scope and to the side of the dragon. The dragon began to turn, and Garrett waited. He waited until the dragon had turned almost to a right angle, and he squeezed the trigger. A cloud of smoke erupted from the barrel of the gun as a glowing round leapt out at the dragon. It struck it in the side and exploded. Garrett could see glittering bits of scale flying in a dazzling array from the side of the dragon, with bits of flesh intermingling with them. However, the dragon was still standing. It roared, and let loose a wall of flame at Helen and Anthony. Garrett did not look to see how they fared but he fired off another shot at where he had struck it before.

The second shell struck the dragon where the first shell's explosion had cratered the flesh and left blood dripping down the dragon's side. The second round penetrated the skin there and then exploded. Garrett was relieved to see flesh and other gore from the dragon fly out from its side. The dragon had stopped spewing flame at Helen and Anthony, who had managed to dodge the brief attack. Garrett saw the dragon collapse from its feet, its side penetrated deeply with a crater. To Garrett's surprise, the dragon, like everything else on the planet, began to rapidly decay. Within a matter of a minute there was nothing more than a large pool of liquid left where it had fallen.

"Okay, let's start moving these people up to Pioneer Two."

"Shouldn't we try to revive them first with moon atomizers?"

Garrett mentally smacked himself in his head. He had forgotten about the healing items completely. He searched through his inventory and found that he had ten of the moon atomizers. Garrett went around and revived eight of the people. Helen revived the other seven there. Everyone left quickly without saying anything to anyone. Garrett figured that getting knocked down and then revived was an embarrassing thing. Garrett decided himself to head back up.


	19. XIX

XIX 

Garrett got back up and just as soon as he could get back into his apartment, he got a call from Montague.

"Some of the missing hunters have returned."

"Yeah, I managed to get rid of the dragon."

"Is its corpse there?"

"No, it disappeared just like all the other animals do."

"Is there any residue left?"

"Yeah, lots of that."

"Good. I'll need to get some samples."

Garrett hung up the phone and began putting his things away and reloading his black powder weapons. As he was doing this, he heard the door open. He turned around to see that Jackie was coming in. She had apparently been down on the surface. She also didn't look like things had been going easy for her, as her clothes were covered in dirt and ash.

"What happened to you?"

"They've opened up a new area, so I went down to check it out."

"Do you mean the underground caves?"

"Yeah, how did you know about that?"

Garrett tapped the large rifle leaning against the wall.

"I opened that place up with my little friend here."

"Where did you find that?!"

"A scientist I was working for let me have use of his facilities."

Jackie picked up the heavy rifle and shouldered it.

"This would be a lot better than that M4."

"I don't know if you could handle the recoil, but I'm sure the doctor would let you come with me to his lab so we could make you something."

"How long would that take?"

"Not too long at all. All I need to do is design what you want me to and a machine like a 3D printer would just make it automatically."

"Cool."

"You want to go?"

"Not now, I am exhausted."

"All I did was break into the entrance of the cave. I didn't actually go in. How was it?"

"Everything there is different. And the things are much stronger. You can shoot them in the head but that won't even kill them in a shot."

"Damn, but then again that M4 has got some pretty weak rounds. We'll have to make some stronger weapons."

The next morning, Garrett and Jackie prepared their equipment. Garrett gave Jackie his more powerful Kalashnikov so she could leave behind her M4, and he brought his photon rifle and MG34. He figured there wouldn't be anything like the dragon that he faced, so he would only come back for the heavy armor piercing rifle in case he had an extreme need for it. They went up to the teleporter with their things. Now they could choose either the forest or the cave. Garrett selected to go to the cave, and soon he and Jackie were standing in that first room, with the partially destroyed door at their backs and a new one before them.

"This is where his lab is?!"

"Nope, but before we go off to make weapons I want to see what we're up against here."

"It's not too good in there though."

"Well, now we're better armed. Wait, what's this?"

Something on the bottom of the teleporter caught Garrett's eye. He bent down and saw that there was something there that was not on any other teleporters. It looked like clay was stuck around one of the photon tubes from a weapon. Then he realized that it was plastic explosive.

"Crap, it's mined!"

Garrett ran toward the door and pulled Jackie through with him. He quickly glanced around the large room that he was in. It was extremely hot and dry inside, with lava flowing from vents in a couple corners and into a lake of liquid rock that the room seemed to float on. It was also empty. Garrett didn't have any more time to look around but pushed Jackie away from him and to the ground on one side of the doorway while he himself jumped to the ground behind a small ridge. A huge ball of green fire burst from the doorway, pieces of debris riding on the explosion. After the dirt and smoke had settled, Garrett got up and turned towards the carnage scene he had just come out of. The room was slightly larger from the explosion, the steel wall that was part of the door between that and the dragon's lair being still barely intact but every door gone. The teleporter was also gone. Garrett turned around to see if Jackie was okay.

"Just before the explosion I saw those doors sliding shut."

Jackie was pointing at the doors on the far side of the room. Garrett instantly thought of Jardem, who had abandoned him and a few others in the forest.

"I think we should think about going back."

"How? That teleporter was just blown to pieces!"

"In the dragon's lair there was another teleporter. We can just use that."

Garrett and Jackie turned around and walked through the gutted teleporter room. However, as soon as Garrett stepped into the room he heard a faint whistling noise. He looked up and saw another dragon circling near the top of the room.

"Damn, another dragon!"

"You killed it before though?"

"I did, but I guess there are more than that one."

"Well you killed one before, so how hard could this one be?"

"I used that huge armor piercing rifle to take it out, and even that took two shots. I don't think what we have now would even scratch it."

Jackie aimed her Kalashnikov up at the dragon and fired off two quick shots. The sound of the shots was muffled by the size of the dome, but it wasn't enough for it to escape the dragon's hearing. It banked its wings, turned its head, and spit out a large ball of fire at Garrett and Jackie, who quickly jumped back through the small room into the other large one. They ducked behind the ridge and after the ground shook another huge ball of flame, this time orange, leapt through the door.

"It can't fit through, let's go."

As flame continued sporadically shooting through the door, Garrett and Jackie turned around and crawled prone halfway across the room. Strangely enough this room was still devoid of any enemies. Garrett motioned for Jackie to go check two boxes sitting against one side of the room, and himself walked up to the door. As he got close to it he saw that it was locked. He made a spot check for explosives on that side of the door. Annoyed, he turned around to Jackie.

"What did you find in the boxes?"

"Just a couple healing things, what's up with the door?"

"It's locked. It doesn't look like it's rigged to blow though, so I think we should check the other door."

Garrett walked over to the other door, which was on the side of the room opposite where the boxes were. This door wasn't locked on this door.


	20. XX

XX 

Garrett stepped up to the door, which slid open to reveal a short corridor. This was plain and empty, with rough rock walls and a metal floor. There was another unlocked door at the other end of this passage. As Garrett was walking toward this door he took out his photon rifle, and instructed Jackie to do the same thing. He hoped they wouldn't have to be there for long, but he wanted to wait and see if there were strong things that he would have to save the ammunition of the stronger weapons for.

The door at the other end of the passage slid open and they stepped in. This room was large and roughly square. The ground was rock, and small cracks showed the volcanic nature of it. There were a couple rocks in the room and a few boxes in one corner. However, there was also a strange noise as a few beasts teleported into scattered positions in the room. These shrieked and began walking straight towards Garrett and Jackie.

"How did they do that?!"

"I don't know, but I guess these things will be harder to beat if they can do that!"

"Oh well, open fire!"

Garrett leveled his rifle at one of the nearby enemies. Their heads looked like those of sharks, but their bodies were like those of the boomas. They were covered with green scales except for their claws, of which there was one long one on the end of each arm. These claws appeared to have some sort of photon in them since they glowed green. Garrett fired several rounds into this one, followed shortly after by a few rounds from Jackie's rifle. When the beast fell over after taking about ten rifle shots, it fell down and just like the other enemies from the forest it quickly melted into the ground. Garrett turned and could see that there were four others closing on them. They weren't closing very fast, but Garrett still didn't want to wait for his rifle to cool down. He quickly switched to his MG34.

"Jackie, get over here!"

To stabilize the powerful machine gun with nothing else to prop it on, Garrett put it over Jackie's shoulder and told her to hold onto the bipod. She put her rifle away and did so. Garrett set another one of the beasts in his sights and pulled down the trigger. He let a short burst fly out and straight into its head. The greater firepower ripped its head open and knocked it down. Garrett turned again and fired at and quickly downed another of the shark-like enemies. There were only two left, and they also fell quickly to the machine gun. After those ware quickly melting into the ground with their brethren, Garrett put away the machine gun and picked up his rifle.

"Damn, that was harder. At least for the photon rifle."

"Yeah, but it was still easy with that machine gun it seemed."

"True. However I don't have infinite ammunition with that, only a few hundred rounds. If I could get back to get more we would be safe, but I can't do that."

Garrett cut himself off when he saw something else appearing. This time though, it was just a harmless looking flower.

"Well now…"

Garrett stepped closer to the flower and tapped it with the barrel of his rifle. To his surprise it turned its head down to expose a beak and it tried to bite him. Garrett stepped back and fired several rounds into the flower with his rifle. To his surprise, it flinched and then shot a ball of green goo at him. He easily sidestepped this and fired a few more rounds. The flower slumped over and began decaying like all the animals had.

"Okay. That was strange."

There was a deep clanking noise and the red light on the far door changed to green. Garrett walked over to that, but then remembered the boxes to one side and walked over to them. One of the boxes was empty, but there was a saber in another one and a barrier in a third one. Since Jackie only had one barrier, Garrett gave that second one to her and took the saber for himself. He stepped up to the open door with the rifle in hand, but the next room was a small one with no other entrances or exits. Instead, there were several boxes in the middle of it. These yielded a few more healing items. There was a switch behind these boxes too, which Garrett hit to see what would happen. He didn't hear anything and him and Jackie left the room.

Back in the main room there were a couple more of the sharks which had somehow gotten in. Garrett was able to gun down one of them and when his rifle started overheating he switched for his new saber, which he hacked into the second shark with. Jackie also switched to her own saber and helped make quick work of the shark. The other door that had been previously locked was now showing that it was unlocked. Garrett checked this door once again for any traps but found none. The door slid open to reveal another hallway. This one had a tee intersection in it, so Garrett edged up to that and checked down the side passage. That one was also clear.

Garrett chose to head to the left. This opened into another room that must have been large. However, this room was dark, with the only light coming from a few cracks in the ground that exposed a bit of lava below, and from the red light in the opposite door. He decided to go check the other door and that opened up into a round and fortunately light filled room. He and Jackie walked in, this time Garrett with his saber and Jackie with her rifle, and they made quick work of a few sharks, and by swapping their weapons they prevented them from overheating. One of the doors remained locked here, but a second door became unlocked.

Garrett walked up to this door but upon reaching it he heard several beasts teleport down behind him. He turned around and sliced his saber through several of them and saw Jackie behind them shooting into their backs. He backed toward the door, unleashing a second slice as he did, and upon turning around he saw that there was a large room on the other side of the door, in which several more enemies waited. He sliced a third time, and one of the enemies fell. Garrett then quickly made a stab and slice into another one and it fell. The third one fell from Jackie's shots. As they disappeared, one of them left behind a handgun. Garrett took this, holding that in his left hand and the saber in his right.

The third door in this room, that had been locked, was now unlocked. Garrett stepped through as Jackie stood in the doorway, and was in another but shorter hallway. He stepped through the door at the opposite end and into another small dead end room. There were more boxes here, and upon opening one of them Garrett found a telepipe.

"Hey, we can get back with this!"

Garrett quickly set up the telepipe and he and Jackie stepped into it. He selected for it to send them to Pioneer Two.


	21. XXI

XXI 

Garrett and Jackie appeared back near the Hunters' Guild.

"You want to go get some better weapons now?"

"Definitely. How did those things get so strong?"

"Well look at the environment they were in. It must take something strong to live there."

Garrett walked over to the weapon shop and sold the handgun and saber he had acquired. He knew he was going to get something strong enough to not warrant having those, but at the same time he wanted to keep his photon rifle since it was the strongest of the three photon weapons and he wanted to have one of those for if he ever ran out of ammunition. He them joined Jackie at the teleporter. Like he thought, the destination for the cave was gone from the screen. It didn't matter since he still knew how he would get back down there once he had new weapons.

Jackie and Garrett appeared in the forest. Garrett once again took out his MG34, since he would be getting more ammunition once back at the lab. He climbed over the earthen wall and headed in the direction he remembered having gone with Montague. Every once in a while he would stop to shoot at beasts approaching them. After traveling for a bit they arrived at the small outpost and walked in. Garrett walked back to the teleporter and he and Jackie went up to the lab.

"Wait, where are we now?"

"Back on Pioneer Two."

"Then why did we just go down to the forest and back to get here?"

"So no one sees us."

Garrett opened the door and stepped into the lab. Montague wasn't in at the time, but there was an android standing off to one side attending to something. At the noise of the door opening she turned around.

"You must be Garrett. I heard of you from the doctor. But who are you?"

"Jackie. And you are?"

"I'm Eleanor. Doctor Montague created me many years ago to help him at the lab and running errands outside when he was too busy to."

"Do you mind if we work on making some new weapons on that machine over there?"

"Not at all, but why do you need new equipment?"

"We ran into some trouble in the cave."

"How so?"

"The beasts there are much stronger than the ones on the surface. Plus I think there's someone after us to kill us. They blew up the teleporter with a photon crystal just after we got out of it."

"Then how are you getting back down to this cave?"

"I have an idea, but it shouldn't be too hard."

"Okay, but if there are different enemies you should let me come with you to collect samples."

"I don't have a problem with that as long as you can fight well."

"Don't' worry about that."

Garrett set to work on the machine. He wanted to have a good close range weapon that could break open the head of one of the enemies in a single shot. He thought of making a small caliber grenade launcher like a shotgun, so that is what he started designing. He designed it to be like a slug gun, with a rifled barrel 16mm around. A stick clip able to hold six shells was put in for it that fit under the semi-automatic action of the weapon. The shells Garrett designed were like shotgun shells, but they each held sixteen tiny photon grenades. He also designed shells that held one larger photon grenade. The weapon was given a low zoom infrared scope to top it off. Garrett selected to make one and to make several clips of each type of ammunition.

Garrett took the weapon off the printer-like machine and inspected it. It looked like a good weapon. He turned to Jackie.

"Do you want something like this for close range?"

"I don't know about that, but a submachine gun would be good."

Garrett quickly designed a submachine gun. It was the size of a carbine, but fired 9mm rounds from a large belt clip. It also had a second 16mm barrel under that to fire grenades or other large projectiles. This also got a similar low power infrared scope. He got this done as well as, several clips of uranium 9mm rounds and a few clips of 16mm photon grenades and 16mm flares as well. He handed these all to Jackie upon being completed before setting to work on a long range weapon.

Garrett designed his long range weapon as a high power sniper rifle. It had a 12mm bore and a long rifled barrel, which was set on a composite stock with a high power scope. He designed the scope to be interchangeable between thermal and infrared. He also made the rifle barrel and the semi-automatic action out of a titanium alloy instead of steel. This would be needed for the shells. They were uranium but also had small photon charges inside them so they would both pierce any thick skin or armor deeply and then explode once inside. The shells themselves were given a high velocity by being powered not by black powder, but by small photon explosives instead.

Garrett made this new rifle as well as much ammunition for it. He made a second one for Jackie and then saw that Eleanor was still standing there.

"Do you want anything?"

"No, I have my own weapons right now. I will want to see how those weapons you just made will perform though."

"Are we all ready to go now?"

"I've been waiting for you."

Garrett, Jackie, and Eleanor headed back down to the surface though the lab's teleporter. Garrett wanted to save his and Jackie's new weapons for the cave area, so he and Jackie switched to their photon rifles. Eleanor was also holding the same kind of rifle. The three left the teleporter and headed through the forest. Garrett told them to head for the teleporter that headed deeper into the forest, and he himself headed back up to Pioneer Two.

Garrett quickly returned to his apartment once he was back on Pioneer Two. There all he did was arm himself with his heavy armor piercing rifle and he headed back down to the surface. He found a trail of blood leading to where Eleanor and Jackie were waiting near the teleporter. They went through the teleporter and were back near the dome. Here they quickly gunner their way through several rooms and arrived on the platform. Eleanor inspected the teleporter.

"Is this the one that goes from the surface to the cave?"

"Yes, but it comes out in a large open chamber that it appears dragons frequent."

Jackie stepped up.

"How big?"

"Very big. Get out, oh, that new sniper rifle should do well."

Garrett took out his own armor piercing rifle and checked the clip. If the last dragon needed only two rounds, he would be fine. Jackie took out her sniper rifle and put in a clip. Eleanor switched her rifle for another, much larger photon weapon.

"What is that?"

"You've never seen a shotgun?"

"Oh wait, I did before. But that isn't a shotgun."

Garrett took out his grenade launcher.

"This is a shotgun."

"That is a strange weapon, but can we stop arguing and go down?"


	22. XXII

XXII 

Garrett took out his huge rifle again and all three stepped onto the teleporter. This time, Garrett was prepared for the dragon. He quickly scanned the room and saw it flying low on the opposite side.

"Hold your fire."

Garrett went prone and set the dragon in his sights. He aimed ahead and above it and fired. The shot streaked quickly across the room, but missed a few inches above it. The shot struck the rock wall of the cave instead and showered the dragon with pieces of rock. Apparently confused about the angle of the attack, it landed. This time Garrett heard the strange sound of the photon propelled projectile from Jackie's rifle and saw the round instantly streak across the room and into the dragon's side. The explosion from the 12mm round was not nearly as great as that from Garrett's larger bore rifle, but the different shell design and higher speed managed to pierce the dragon's thick hide. It didn't go deep enough for anything more than a flesh wound, though.

Garrett looked over at Jackie as she fired a second round. It was much more impressive than a normal rifle, with a long green ball of fire streaking out of the barrel behind the round. This round also hit the dragon, but now the dragon turned and started walking towards the three. Garrett looked back into his rifle sight and aimed for a head shot. He pulled the trigger and the round flew right on target. However, to his dismay its hitting the dragon was obscured by a shower of red sparks and the round deflected off and into the ceiling. Jackie's round also glanced off the dragon's head.

However, as Garrett got up to get out of the way of the inevitable fire breath, Eleanor aimed her shotgun. A bar on either side folded out and Eleanor took aim. She fired and five green photons streaked out and into the dragon. It didn't glance off like the projectiles did, but it didn't seem to do much damage either.

"Watch out, that thing breathes fire!"

Garrett started pushing Eleanor out of the way of the dragon. Once she got the idea and ran from a huge ball of fire, Garrett ran up close to the dragon. He had an idea on how to get rid of it quickly. He switched to his grenade launcher and checked its clip. It was loaded with the shot grenades instead of the large ones, but he didn't feel like switching the clip. He aimed at one of the dragon's huge knees and fired. The result was impressive visually. Fourteen tiny explosions tore into the knee, leaving it burned looking. Garrett fired a second round into the knee and once again many small explosions hit it. After a third round it was too much and that leg buckled.

Garrett quickly ejected the partially spent clip and ran to the dragon's head. He tossed the clip at the ground next to the head and then started backing away. He turned and saw Eleanor firing into the dragon's neck with her shotgun.

"Shoot that clip next to its head!"

Eleanor changed her aim and shot at the clip. The first shot struck, and the several individual small explosive balls in the shot shells exploded as one. Garrett and Eleanor were a bit too close to it, and they were knocked on their backs by the explosion.

As soon as the dust and rock stopped raining down, Garrett was able to see that the dragon's head had been mostly destroyed by the explosion. With no more threat from the dragon, Garrett, Eleanor, and Jackie got back in a group. Eleanor tapped Garrett's now empty grenade launcher.

"I must concede that your weapons are strong, but they have one inherent flaw."

"What is that?"

"They can be easily deflected."

"I see, but you saw what these things could do. And if I hit in the right place I don't think I would have to worry about deflection."

Garrett walked over to the teleporter.

"I thought you were coming into the cave?"

"I am going to, but first do you know how to move one of these?"

"Why do you want to move this?"

"So no one has to fight a dragon whenever they want to come down here."

"Oh, where do you want it moved to?"

"Right through that door is good."

Eleanor moved the teleporter quickly into the small room between the dragon area and the rest of the cave system. Once that was done they all started into the cave. Now Jackie was using her submachine gun and Garrett had his grenade launcher. The first group of sharks teleported in and Eleanor immediately hit all of the nearby ones in one shot from her shotgun. Jackie but a short burst into a nearby one's head, knocking it down. Garrett had loaded more of the shot shells into his grenade launcher and now aimed at another nearby shark. With one shot its front half was a bloody pulp and it fell to the ground to be soon gone.

Eleanor turned her gun and aimed again. This time the bars on the sides turned forward more. Eleanor fired and instead of all five rounds firing at once the shots went off like a machine gun, alternating between each barrel. Each of these shots ripped into a nearby shark and brought it down after a burst. Garrett shot the last nearby shark and then looked down across the room to see another several sharks teleporting in.

"Get your rifles out."

Garrett took out his sniper rifle and quickly had one of the creatures in his crosshairs. He fired the shot and its head was vaporized. He heard Jackie fire and saw another beast's chest get torn open. It too fell. Garrett fired another shot and got another kill. Eleanor began firing with her rifle and connected several shots to a fourth enemy, killing that one after seven or eight shots. With that, nothing else appeared. The door at the far end of the room, like before, was locked. However, the one on the side of the room was unlocked, so Garrett switched to his grenade launcher and headed through that door.

After pushing through several sharks and a few more of the flowers in this room rapidly, Garrett hit the switch at the dead end and headed back into the main room. However, Eleanor shouted to him from back in the dead end.


	23. XXIII

XXIII 

"Here's something I haven't seen before!"

"What is it?"

"I'm reading it as a handgun, but there's something else that I can't identify."

"Then take it with you."

Garrett headed back into the main room before everyone else and made quick work of three more sharks that had teleported in and waited by the newly unlocked door. Once Jackie and Eleanor caught up he headed through and into the hall. Instead of going straight, this time he turned left to the doorway of the still darkened room.

"Eleanor, since you're an android can you see in the dark?"

"To an extent. I don't think you can though."

"No, but our weapons have infrared scopes on them."

Garrett followed Eleanor into the room. He could faintly hear some of the beasts teleporting into the room, and swept his grenade launcher around the room, peering through the scope. He saw two that were farther away and saw a shot from Eleanor's rifle streak toward it. He turned farther and saw another closer shark. He pulled the trigger and saw it get torn apart. Jackie next to him got something in her sight and fired at it. However, an explosion lit up the room as she had used the grenade launcher on her submachine gun. Garrett turned and saw the remnants of something other than a shark or flower scattered about.

The door on the opposite side of the room lit up green. The light still wasn't on, so Garrett started looking around for a switch or panel to turn it on from. He saw some boxes in a corner of the room and walked over to those. There wasn't anything special in the boxes, just a saber and a healing item. However, there was another switch like the one that opened the door behind these boxes. Garrett hit the switch and some lights in the ceiling of the chamber turned on.

Now with light, Garrett could see that there was nothing else useful in this room. He, Jackie, and Eleanor headed through the door that they had not yet been through and was in a long, winding hallway. There wasn't anything unusual in this, so the three went through the next door. Now they were in a smaller room which was instantly filled with several green sharks, as well as a couple larger red ones. All three opened fire, Garrett with his grenade launcher, Eleanor with her shot, and Jackie with her submachine gun. The eight or so beasts were quickly cut down. However, there was something lying in the puddle of goo that had been one of the beasts.

Garrett stepped forward to see what had been left behind by the shark. He stepped forward and bent down to pick it up, but heard something teleport in right in front of him. He looked up to see a shark pulling back its claw to strike him. Before it hit, he was able to put his arms in front of him. Two small green shields deployed from the barriers, blocking the claw. Garrett kicked the beast sharply, but that didn't do anything. He also didn't want to use the explosive power of the grenade launcher so close to his head. However, the shark reeled back as several green photons struck it. Garrett got up and stepped out of the way of Jackie. She put a burst into the shark's head and neck. Garrett then leveled his rifle and shot past the dying shark at another one behind it.

The other door in the chamber flashed the green light and Garrett assumed the room was safe. He stepped forward again to see what was in the green goo of two sharks. He reached into the goo and felt something hard. He pulled out not one, but two small daggers. He stored this in his inventory and wondered for a minute why those were inside a beast. He decided that items could be sent through midair by scanning things that something could be misaimed and be directed into a beast. It was a good enough explanation for him at the time.

Garrett stepped up to the unlocked door. It slid open to reveal another short hallway. He stepped through this and then into another chamber. However, this one was different from the other ones. It was not lit from the ceiling. Instead, an orange glow filled the chamber from below. There was a huge crack running across the middle of the chamber. It ran the entire width of the chamber and separated the side Garrett was one from the other side by some twenty feet. Garrett stepped to the edge and looked down to where lava flowed only ten feet below him. On the opposite side of the chamber, there was a small narrow tunnel that led away into darkness.

With nothing to do in that wrecked chamber, the three turned back and headed all the way to the three way hallway. There, Garrett led them to the left and into the round chamber. There the three quickly worked through several more sharks and a few flowers to make the doors open. Garrett sent Jackie to the left door to pick up whatever was in the boxes there and he and Eleanor went through the right door. There was another long chamber through that door, but not nearly as large as the one at the beginning of the cave complex.

The first enemies to show up here was a wave of sharks that was already in the room. Eleanor used her shotgun to put rounds into the nearby ones, and Garrett switched to his sniper rifle to pick off a couple at the other end of the chamber. After this, something else teleported in on the other side of the room. This was a dragon, but one which was only a bit larger than a shark. Garrett set his sights on it and shot it. The round struck its wing and exploded. This tore a hole in the wing but by no means killed the dragon. It turned and stared at Garrett. Garrett wondered what it was doing until a blue beam shot from the dragon's mouth at him. He put out one of his arms to block it with the barrier.

The barrier took the hit, but after that it was showering sparks. Garrett quickly tossed it off and onto the ground a good distance in front of him. Unlike anything else he had seen so far malfunction, and much to his surprise, the barrier did not explode. Garrett quickly took aim at the dragon, but before he could get off a shot its head was knocked off by a round from Jackie's gun. Now that this dragon was dead, a door on the far side of the room unlocked. Garrett walked across the room and noticed that there was another healing item left in the puddle of blood where the dragon was.


	24. XXIV

XXIV 

Garrett headed into the next chamber, which was an L-shaped hallway. Eleanor stopped behind him.

"Wait, there's something there."

"I don't see anything."

"That's because it's camouflaged."

"Well what is it?"

"It's a trap."

"Can you do anything about it?"

"Back up."

Garrett backed behind Eleanor. She raised her rifle and fired at something. There apparently was something there, since there was a large explosion at the bend in the passageway. Eleanor stepped forward to the bend.

"It's clear."

Garrett once again took the lead. Jackie and Eleanor followed him into another chamber. This one was the size of the dead end ones, but it had three exits. One was the one which the three had just entered through. Another one was a door on the opposite side. The third exit was through a teleporter on the left side. Garrett stepped up to the teleporter and saw that it did not read what the destination was, just a bunch of numbers. He decided to not try that and headed through the door he had not been through yet.

This opened into a short hallway. Once the door on the other side opened, Garrett saw that it opened up into an immense cavern. This was a huge man made platform built over an exposed lake of lava. He started walking toward the middle. There were many boxes on either side of the platform. Tunnels on either side let lava constantly flow into the lake below. Garrett walked over to one of the boxes and opened it. Inside was another rifle. However, he quickly stopped himself from checking the other boxes. He heard the faint sound of beasts once again teleporting in, and then heard the crack of Jackie's SMG.

"They're everywhere!"

Garrett did a quick check and saw that they were indeed everywhere. There were sharks of varying colors, flowers, something that looked like a giant bug, and even a couple small dragons. He estimated there to be at least thirty enemies in the room, not counting the three that Jackie and Eleanor had just gunned down in a matter of seconds. More were teleporting in. Garrett quickly fired the last round in his grenade launcher at another nearby shark and switched to his MG34. He set this over Eleanor's shoulder, who flinched defensively.

"It's just me. Start backing to the door."

Garrett let out a long burst into several more nearby sharks, knocking some of them down and making some others flinch from the hits. After putting another burst into a nearby dragon and knocking it out of the air, he looked up to see that there were a couple more dragons circling down. He also caught a glimpse of a tall pillar of rock, clean of any flowing lava, jutting out of the lake next to the platform. He saw that there was a teleporter up on it.

The three reached the door safely, but they knew they were not heading back to Pioneer Two just yet. Garrett had seen the teleporter up on the high rock and wondered if that was the one the one in the small room led to. He decided on a small test. He took a piece of rock from the ground and set it on the teleporter. He then turned to Eleanor and Jackie, who were at the door and contentedly sniping away the rapidly appearing beasts with her photon rifle. He told them to watch the pillar of rock to see if anything would happen.

Garrett put a piece of rock onto the teleporter and activated it. Just like he thought, Jackie confirmed that the teleporter on the rock pillar had activated. Now Garrett stepped onto the teleporter and activated it. He appeared on the smooth surface at the top of the rock pillar. He knew that only the dragons would be able to get to him, so he quickly went prone and sent a flying that was near him spiraling down into the lava. He then switched to his sniper rifle and the other two off on the other side of the chamber were quickly killed.

With the immediate threat out of the way, Garrett looked around to see what could be causing all the beasts to teleport in. Through his scope he spotted a switch in the middle of the room. It was next to a railing which bordered a round hole in the metal floor. He figured that the switch could have something to do with it. Garrett turned around to go back through the teleporter, but he then saw a small bridge leading into a door in the wall of the chamber. The door was unlocked, so he headed up to it. This door opened to a turning hallway.

The hallway led to a set of metal stairs that headed up. Garrett went up these stairs and came into another hallway. This one he figured went straight across the top of the chamber. He found out he was right when he came across a bit of metal plate over the floor. Upon moving this he could see straight down some hundred feet to the chamber below. Taking opportunity of his height advantage, Garrett loaded the large grenades into his grenade launcher and fired one down into a group of sharks below him. The explosion scattered parts of them about the area.

Garrett then continued down the hall to another set of stairs down, and ended up on a metal platform he had not seen on the opposite side of the room. For some reason, there was a photon machine gun up there, mounted on a post on the platform's railing. Garrett leaned on the railing and shouted down at Jackie and Eleanor in the doorway.

"Can you make it to the middle of the room?"

"Why?"

"There's a switch for something there! I'll give you cover fire!"

"Okay, are you ready?"

"Yeah! Go!"

Garrett set down his grenade launcher and got onto the machine gun. He set the scoped sight onto some targets ahead of the two walking forward below him and held down the trigger. Sharks and other beasts down on the floor of the chamber were wiped out from the combined firepower of the machine gun and Jackie's submachine gun and Eleanor's shot, and the two pushed forward steadily until they were in the middle of the room. Jackie hit the switch quickly and different from Garrett's plans, they stayed there. Beasts were still teleporting in at a slower rate, so Garrett held down the trigger of the machine gun. However, it soon stopped firing. A small panel next to the scope said that the machine gun was going into cooling mode.

Garrett picked up and stored his grenade launcher and took out his sniper rifle. He then started quickly gunning down beasts. However, he also noticed that it only seemed to be the ones that were already there that were attacking, no new ones. He fired the last round in his clip and started running over to the teleporter. Once he was over there he saw that there were only a couple beasts left and that Eleanor and Jackie were finishing those off. He went through the teleporter and in a minute was in the middle of the chamber with Jackie and Eleanor. He looked and saw that the door had unlocked.


End file.
